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Stella Lee

More than half the expatriate police officers serving under the Crown have applied to leave before the handover, new figures have revealed.

 The Civil Service Branch's figures showed 44 per cent of the 540 members of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS) have left or will leave before July, with the retiring group mostly police officers.

 Of the 285 HMOCS police officers, 151, or 53 per cent, have applied to retire and 114 will stay.

  The remaining 20 will have to make up their minds by December.

 Of the 68 HMOCS administrative officers, 51 per cent are leaving and 40 per cent are staying.

 About 18 per cent of the 38 HMOCS members from the Judiciary are leaving the service, 68 per cent staying and 13 per cent are, as yet, undecided. The remaining 149 HMOCS officers are from other departments and have a wastage rate of 29 per cent.

 Wastage has been a concern of Police Commissioner Eddie Hui Ki-on who has taken the unprecedented step of writing an open letter to his staff to calm fears of an exodus of top officers by July.

 The Security Branch will brief members of the Legislative Council's security panel on Monday on the predicted overall manpower of the police force in the run-up to the handover.

  Of the 150 officers ranked from senior superintendent to senior assistant commissioner, 39 are expected to leave between now and July 1, 1997, as a 'worst case scenario'.

 The wastage rate in the commanding tiers was lower than the 31 per cent forecast in July. Some officers changed their minds, others have left the force over the past three months.

  The latest forecast will leave a projected 62 vacancies in these ranks, but the management has maintained that there will be enough qualified candidates.

 The branch will also tell legislators that the force has achieved its localisation target with 53 per cent of the 431 officers at superintendent rank and above locals.

 The force has set a target of having more local officers at these ranks than expatriates by 2000.



Expat police opting to quit