Kai Tak staff boost

FIFTY more immigration officers will be assigned to overflowing Kai Tak airport this year to help cut increasing flight delays resulting from long queues.

The move, which comes as airport traffic exceeded 25 million passengers for the first time last year, will be the first manpower increase in at least five years.

The officers, who will be assigned to desks serving both arriving and departing passengers, will begin appearing in April to join the 620 uniformed staff already working at Kai Tak.

'The number of uniformed officers had to be boosted in view of the increasing traffic because it is not possible to maintain a satisfactory service standard,' Immigration Department spokesman, Eric Chan Kwok-ki, said.

'We admit that staffing at the airport is not adequate and we have to deploy these resources so as not to delay flights, but we still want more officers. We asked the Government for 117 posts for the year but only got 50.' Provisional Civil Aviation Department (CAD) figures given to the South China Morning Post show the number of passengers at the airport has grown by an average 11 per cent a year in the past decade, with volume last year reaching 25.18 million passengers.

But while passenger numbers have increased the number of officers has not, and airlines have been complaining about delays.

The Immigration Department could not remember when the last increase in officers was granted, but Mr Chan said not a single officer had been added at Kai Tak since at least 1990.