The unnamed and official responses (South China Morning Post, April 7 and 8 respectively) to my previous letter about the continuing 'victimisation' of non-Chinese public servants are notable for what was not said or acknowledged.
First, the Association of Expatriate Civil Servants (AECS) has never challenged the propriety of the Government's hiring preference for its local citizens. What it has challenged in the courts, and continues to challenge, are a succession of policies that singled out one small minority of its already in-service citizens for unlawfully discriminatory actions (eviction from service, demotion, restrictions on promotion, denial of access to pension service, indefensible language requirements).
The Opening-up Scheme is a farce. I leave it to the Government to explain why since its inception in 1995, only former overseas officers have been evicted from service. If the scheme was meant to apply equally to overseas and local officers, why were only local officers encouraged and allowed to escape its drastic consequences by transferring to pension service? Why was the scheme made applicable only to those ranks and posts in which a significant number of overseas officers were employed? This scheme was, by the Government's admissions, brought in as a response to the difficult problems presented by the AECS challenges to its localisation policies. The Government has publicly bragged that its localisation policies (including the Opening-up Scheme) were still intact despite the fact that many of its aspects had been struck down by the courts. The legality of this particular policy has still not been substantively heard by the courts.
In other countries where there are two or more official languages (Hong Kong is one of these) it is sufficient if its citizens are proficient in any of the official languages. Exceptions will occur where fluency in more than one language is required to carry out the duties of a particular position.
That is not what is happening in Hong Kong. The Government has established as a goal that the public service be trilingual (English, Cantonese, Mandarin) and biliterate (English and Chinese writing). This very effectively excludes all of its citizens who have not been brought up in the Chinese school system. The combined effect of the drastically reduced intake of overseas employees (fair enough, as we have said), the gradual but sure retirement of the few remaining overseas officers, the continued exposure of overseas officers to the Opening-up Scheme, because they cannot meet the oral and written language requirements for transfer to pension service, and the requirement for newly employed employees to be at least bilingual and biliterate, as I stated in my previous letter, will result in a public service staffed almost entirely by people of the Chinese race.
As for the suggestion of 'Name and Address Supplied' that all former overseas officers should learn Chinese to demonstrate their commitment to Hong Kong, it is clear that the writer does not accept the principles of freedom from language discrimination enshrined in Hong Kong law via the Basic Law, the Bill of Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. English is an official language of Hong Kong.
