CIVIL servants, watch your backs! Revolution is in the air.
There are voices out there calling for it already. How long before this snowballs into something more dangerous than localisation? Will the South China Morning Post be demanding your resignation, merely because you don't happen to know anything about the business of the department you're running? Will you need a bus driver's licence to be Secretary for Transport? Some 74 per cent of franchised bus drivers are not licensed to drive anything else. What sort of qualification is that, anyway? Remember, too, that a little learning can be a dangerous thing. Safer by far to bring in an administrative officer, a generalist trained to know nothing.
At least if the bus crashes, she can give a good steer to the press.
It was the admission by Commissioner for Transport-designate Lily Yam that she had no experience in transport matters, but was willing to learn, that had engineering representative Samuel Wong blowing off steam like one of the commissioner's conveyances.
Would the Government inform the Legislative Council, he asked, whether it was now the policy to treat D6 posts (ie, civil service directorate jobs like Commissioner for Transport) as training posts? How long, he went on, did it take the average appointee with no previous specialist experience to learn enough about the subject 'to be able to discharge his duties as the head of a department requiring specialist attributes?' Secretary for the Civil Service Michael Sze, (a man who, in his time, has been Director of Marine and not sunk any ships for lack of knowledge) was adamant.
No, of course it wasn't government policy to use D6 posts for training. It was just that 'the experience gained in D6 posts [would] provide valuable training for the future'.
Anyway Ms Yam had plenty of experience relevant to the duties of the Commissioner for Transport.
