The nonsense of rating mediocre civil servants as 'very good' and everybody else as 'excellent' must end, Secretary for Civil Service Lam Woon-kwong said yesterday.
Speaking on RTHK's Letter to Hong Kong, Mr Lam said a credible pay-performance scheme would not exist until discipline played a key part in appraisal.
'If we don't stop this nonsense of rating our mediocre staff 'very good' and everybody else as 'excellent', how can the management have the credibility to throw the first stone?' he said.
'And how much longer can we tolerate incompetence and non-performance in our family without having the fire of public fury burning us?' It was essential the administration streamlined disciplinary procedures and took tough action by establishing a designated secretariat and a panel of adjudicators.
Defending proposals to offer long-term tenure only to those employees who had proven their potential to rise higher, he said this would enable the civil service to weed out mediocre staff at an early stage and replace them with new blood.
Performance pay was needed to provide a more powerful reward system than promotion alone, and there would be fewer chances of advancement in the next decade.
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