Jobs for life - but little to do

I KNOW it's difficult for outsiders to understand, but it's a department left over. It's a technical issue.' Kelvin Chan Kut-fai, assistant director of the Technical Educational and Industrial Training Department, is explaining why the department has staff facilities, even an Internet home page, but no 'operational functions', a situation that has existed for more than seven years.

With confusing situations like this, it is hardly surprising that members of the public tend to think civil servants are often underworked.

Secretary for the Civil Service Lam Woon-kwong even admitted two weeks ago that the public was often right. He said the civil service had problems with its 'management style'.

But times are changing - at least in theory. Squeezed by demands for better service and falling government revenues, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa used last month's Policy Address to announce a productivity drive in the 180,000-strong civil service.

Mr Tung said: 'In the next few months we will require departments and agencies to put forward proposals for new or improved services without giving them additional financial resources.

'Managers will be required to deliver productivity gains amounting to five per cent of their operating expenditure between now and the year 2002.' Chinese University's Professor Lau Siu-kai warned: 'Mr Tung is sending a very clear message that the good old days are gone.' There are no figures showing overwork or underwork in the civil service. But talking to civil servants it does not take long to find stories of enforced idleness.

One reports: 'I was posted to a department to set up [name of statutory body] and we completed it three months early. I had nothing to do - nothing. So I rang up my bosses and told them, and they said, 'We'll get back to you.' 'After a week or so, they stopped returning my calls. So I contacted the Civil Service Bureau. I was amazed at their reaction. They were furious - they practically court-martialled me.' In some cases, government departments use work practices that would be considered bizarre in the private sector. For instance, this reporter visited a government department two years ago that had undergone two phases of a three-phase computerisation project costing more than $100 million. The software looked great - but there was a mysterious lack of cable coming from the back of the machines to link them together.