Lai See | Huge destruction of government records continues

It is with some regret that we feel obliged to take issue with our chief secretary, the admirable Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, over her written reply yesterday on the vexed question of Hong Kong's public records. Legislative Councillor Cyd Ho Sau-lan had asked, given Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's support for an archive law during his election campaign, if any progress had been made so far. Her question was much more detailed but that was the gist of it.

In her answer, Lam said: "Despite there being no dedicated archival legislation, the essential general principles of records management have in fact been implemented in Hong Kong through administrative measures."

This seems an unduly complacent response given that the director of audit was scathing in his criticism of the Government Records Service. Its 2011 report noted the service had failed miserably in practically every aspect of its remit. It is hard to imagine a miraculous turnaround in such a short time.

The most stunning aspect of Lam's reply was the revelation that in the second half of last year, 23,189 metres of documents were destroyed with the permission of the agency's director. This is a phenomenal number of records - it is equivalent to 55 times the height of the Two IFC building. There was considerable dismay among those concerned about the state of the government's archives when they learned that prior to the move to the Tamar offices, 1,181.7 metres of records were destroyed within six months (three times the height of Two IFC). At the time, archivists said it was impossible for such an amount of documents to have been properly screened over that period. In the past six months, almost 20 times this volume was destroyed, so they would have been subject to considerably less scrutiny.

If these extraordinary figures are correct, then the government's management of its records is not getting better as Lam maintains, but is getting much worse. The Law Reform Society is going to consider the matter of an archive law, but if this rate of destruction is maintained, there will be precious little left to archive.