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Scheme bad for HK

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The Alliance of Housing Department Staff Unions, with a membership of more than 11,000, represents different professions within the Housing Department such as housing managers, engineers, surveyors, architects, planners, and frontline staff.

The jobs of these officials are at risk, because of a scheme masterminded by the Housing Authority, which is aimed at achieving greater private sector involvement.

Union members are afraid that the Government has, once again, embarked on an ill-conceived course of intervention into the smooth working of the Hong Kong SAR.

The government scheme represents a full-blown assault on the civil service, starting with the Housing Department. And what is the objective? Greater privatisation of jobs of various government departments, even though the Hong Kong civil service is still widely considered to be one of the world's most efficient and devoted public services.

The administration sees privatisation as a 'necessary evil', designed to 'trim the fat' and purge the community of inefficient and incompetent public officers.

However, as has been demonstrated in countless privatisation schemes elsewhere in the world, the net result tends to be massive lay-offs with no guarantee to taxpayers of better and cheaper service delivery or performance.

In many cases, like the waterworks enterprises in the UK, people are bound to end up paying higher fees and getting a poorer quality service in return. It is clear that the Government has mistreated civil servants since the return of Hong Kong to China's sovereignty.

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