Our civil servants are envy of the world

AS a member of the Legislative Council Finance Committee, one of my concerns is that taxpayers' money is spent sensibly. During the March 23 Legco debate on the Budget, I urged the Government to consider trimming the over-generous benefits for three types of people - civil servants, Hospital Authority staff and university academics. Our civil servants are among the highest paid in the world. This is mainly due to unbridled salary and benefit increases over the years. Thus the Governor and policy secretaries earn substantially more than the British prime minister and senior UK civil servants. Recently the Secretary for the Civil Service, Michael Sze, said the Government would simplify procedures for removing 'persistent non-performers'. I applaud this because it's high time the Government cracked the iron rice bowl syndrome. I also suggested terminating the overseas education allowance for children of new recruits to the service. In 1995, taxpayers will spend $3 billion to meet existing commitments to send 3,900 children to study in Britain. This extravagant benefit was created for overseas officers, but later extended to all civil servants. It shows that while the Government may pay lip service to localisation, when it comes to benefits, the tendency is for 'expatriatisation'. Another example is the overseas travel allowance. In 1995 taxpayers will spend $100 million to finance the holiday travels of civil servants. This allowance is for the families of all overseas officers and local officers in the directorate grade. Like the overseas education allowance, it was created for expatriates but later extended to senior local officers. Since the Government has proposed to replace the overseas and local terms and conditions of service with common terms for all civil servants, it should consider abolishing the extravagant overseas education and travel allowances. As these allowances are also available to university academics, abolition would save the taxpayers billions of dollars. The Government argues that such allowances are in line with private sector practice. It is doubtful how many senior officers in big corporations enjoy such bene-fits. Another group which receives over-generous treatment are the Hospital Authority staff. As part of their remuneration package, they receive a salary as well as a monthly cash allowance at a rate up to 60 per cent of their basic salary. The cash allowance, used to attract civil servants to join the HA, is intended to substitute some of the civil service fringe benefits including leave, retirement and housing. The current practice is to adjust the cash allowance in line with annual salary increases. I doubt if this is consistent with the Government's policy on fringe benefits. Furthermore, 3,627 HA employees receive both the cash allowance, which includes an element of housing benefit, and benefits under the home-loan interests subsidy scheme. ISUSPECT this practice runs counter to the Government's policy of not allowing the receipt of 'double benefits' thus I have urged the Government and the HA to look at these anoma-lies. The third group is the university academics. Because their salaries and benefits are tied to the civil service, they are ranked among the highest paid intelligentsia in the world. Some comparisons are telling. The starting pay of a clinical lecturer at the Hong Kong University is $412,980 a year, a senior clinical lecturer $1,042,800 and a reader $1,279,380. In addition, they get 15 per cent terminal gratuity, annual leave, medical benefits and a monthly cash allowance of 60 per cent of basic salary. In contrast, the starting annual salary of a clinical lecturer at the National University of Singapore is the equivalent of $358,042, senior clinical lecturer $441,700 and associate professor $714,983. There are no generous benefits. The salaries may not be strictly comparable because of the different workload, but they do serve to highlight the startling differ-ences. During the Legco debate, I posed a question which has stirred up a hornet's nest - since our academics are so well paid, why have our universities not achieved the international standing of other renowned institutions? I am still waiting for the answer.