A British civil servant who signed simultaneous contracts to work 183 hours a week across five government departments has conceded he made grave misjudgements after defying the physical constraints of time.
The extraordinary arrangement, reported by BBC Business, saw Kashim Chowdhury engaged in multiple public sector posts that theoretically required him to work around the clock with zero sleep, plus an additional 15 hours. A standard calendar week contains precisely 168 hours.
Addressing the revelations surrounding his overlapping public duties, Mr Chowdhury acknowledged that he had "made mistakes" in attempting to juggle the staggering workload across concurrent official rosters.
More hours worked than exist on the clock
The revelation points to a profound breakdown in oversight within departmental hiring frameworks. According to BBC Business, Mr Chowdhury was retained across five different arms of government, with his cumulative obligations amounting to more than 26 hours of daily labour.
The contracts were entered into during a period of heavy departmental reliance on external specialists, contingent labour, and flexible working arrangements. While skilled contractors often seek to maximise billable opportunities, the mathematical impossibility of Mr Chowdhury’s obligations has triggered widespread incredulity across Whitehall.
The full sum drawn across the five roles has not been disclosed, but comparable public sector contractor rates in Britain suggest the cumulative remuneration would have easily exceeded several hundred thousand dollars annually in Australian currency.
Remote working vulnerabilities exposed
The case has cast an unflattering spotlight on the growing international phenomenon of covert "overemployment", wherein staff exploit remote-work protocols to collect multiple full-time salaries simultaneously. While the practice has gained quiet currency within the private technology sector, its penetration into high-trust government bureaucracies raises alarming governance and security concerns.
Administrative analysts noted that such severe double-booking inevitably compromises the delivery of public services. Fulfilling complex civil service duties across five separate organisations concurrently is functionally impossible, raising immediate doubts about the veracity of timesheet submissions, project delivery benchmarks, and direct managerial supervision.
Government agencies have historically operated in isolated bureaucratic silos, leaving internal human resources divisions ill-equipped to detect contractors who cross-bill distinct departments without proper clearance.
Scrutiny turns to procurement safeguards
The affair has amplified domestic calls for urgent auditing reforms and centralised data-matching systems across state procurement channels. Integrity watchdogs have long warned that a lack of unified cross-departmental oversight leaves public purses vulnerable to payroll exploitation and double-dipping.
The episode also carries notable resonance for public sector management in Australia. The Australian Public Service has recently undertaken its own sweeping reappraisal of third-party contracting, auditing transparency, and external labour dependencies to prevent comparable failures of institutional oversight.
As Whitehall figures examine how multiple departments managed to hire the same individual without basic verification, the controversy remains an alarming illustration of the administrative blind spots lingering in post-pandemic public sector administration.
