Kathmandu, July 20 -- The government has decided to suspend all new recruitment into the civil service for the current fiscal year, leaving hundreds of thousands of public service aspirants in uncertainty.

A meeting of ministry secretaries, chaired by Chief Secretary Govinda Bahadur Karki on Monday, decided that no government office will recruit permanent staff or send requisitions for vacant posts to the Public Service Commission (PSC) during the current fiscal year. The meeting also ruled that no office may request the commission to fill permanent vacancies without prior approval from the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers.

The meeting was the first high-level gathering of ministry secretaries since Karki took offic...