EMBARRASSED officials have apologised for questioning staff about their ethnic background in an attempt to prove the localisation policy is not racist.
The Civil Service Branch asked numerous departments to find out which employees on overseas contract terms were 'ethnic or partly ethnic Chinese'.
The information was to be used to fight accusations by the Association of Expatriate Civil Servants that the localisation policy was racially motivated.
However, when the request was discovered by the association after the Inland Revenue Department asked its employees to fill in a questionnaire, the branch backtracked and apologised.
Royston Griffey, president of the association, said the Government only withdrew the questionnaires after realising they had been found out.
'How can the Government justify distributing a questionnaire about someone's race when at the same time it is vigorously defending civil servants' right not to disclose their nationality?' he said.
'Indeed, how can the Government question employees about their race at all? They were obviously trying to gather ammunition to defend their localisation policy against accusations that it is racially motivated, which we still maintain is the case.
