More than 700 Housing Authority workers are paid $13,400 a month to work only 2.5 hours a day, the Director of Audit has found.
In his latest value-for-money report, tabled to the Legislative Council yesterday, Dominic Chan Yin-tat also revealed the department had not kept a full record of where the workers had gone or what they had done while on duty.
Checks in April and May last year on the 39 senior and 677 maintenance workers on the 160 public rental estates disclosed they had nothing to do for 70 per cent of their time. It cost the authority about $73 million a year.
The report also pinpointed over-staffing in hawker control, which cost the authority about $60 million a year. Almost half of the estates had no hawkers.
The disclosures come as the authority, which has about 14,000 workers, prepares to endorse a plan to privatise estate management to improve efficiency and cut costs.
Authority chairman Rosanna Wong Yick-ming said she agreed with the audit findings and expected substantial improvements after the privatisation plan.