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Jimmy Cheung

Joseph Wong says he expects drastic action can be avoided this year, but 13,000 jobs will have to go by 2007

Civil servants will be spared further drastic reforms in the coming financial  year, according to the secretary for the civil service.

But Joseph Wong Wing-ping said more 'voluntary measures' would be needed to help meet the headcount reduction target in  future years.

These include giving incentives to staff whose jobs are becoming obsolete to join the private sector after taking a government retraining course.

With the government desperate to reduce the deficit, civil servants have already suffered a staggered average pay cut of 6 per cent.

The size of the civil service is also being reduced from 173,000 now to 160,000 by 2006-7 to help  reduce the government payroll.

Mr Wong said yesterday that the numbers would be cut to 167,000 by March next year.

Concerns have been raised about whether the civil service will become the target again in Financial Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen's maiden budget, to be delivered next month.

Describing the reduction plan as making good progress, Mr Wong said: 'We don't expect any drastic action in the year 2004-5.'

He conceded that more measures would be explored this year to help get rid of the remaining 7,000 posts after next year.

One proposal is to introduce a voluntary retirement scheme for specific grades with a staff surplus, or areas now thought obsolete.

Another option is to encourage workers in such jobs to undergo  retraining with a view to looking for new openings in the private sector.

Mr Wong said the government had been providing retraining for the entire workforce for years and he saw no reason why civil servants could not benefit from such services.

He said authorities would also step up efforts to redeploy redundant staff to departments that  required additional manpower to meet temporary needs. He added the government had successfully provided more staff to handle extra work created by the renewal of smart identity cards, using clerical workers from other departments.

A similar example is the Registration and Electoral Office.

The department secured additional funding from lawmakers to recruit 50 short-term staff for the Legco elections at a rate of $7,700 a month.

But the department instead  recruited workers from other departments with excessive staff.

As an incentive for departments to provide the staff, the departments were given $7,700 for each staff member they released to help the  Electoral Office.

Mr Wong said the arrangement was worth exploring further to make better use of manpower.

Meanwhile, Mr Wong said the government was considering  extending a civil service exchange programme with the mainland to cover administrative officers.

At present, the programme only applies to professional grades.

Mr Wong said: 'It will definitely help the positioning of the administrative officers. As exchanges with the mainland increase, it would be beneficial for them to familiarise with how municipal authorities in the mainland operate.'



Civil service seeks more voluntary staff cuts