Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying backtracks on promise to freeze his and cabinet's pay
Chief executive's salary will go up 5.68 per cent after he backed out of a promise made during tougher economic times
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying made a U-turn on a promise to freeze his own pay and that of his cabinet ministers, after the government announced late last night a return to levels approved in 2002 by the Legislative Council.
The move means Leung's salary will rise by 5.68 per cent, from HK$351,880 a month to HK$371,885. A government spokesman said the new level would come into effect from the first of next month.
Before he took office, Leung pledged not to go ahead with a pay rise initiated by predecessor Donald Tsang Yam-kuen.
"In 2009, with regard to the socioeconomic conditions at the time, the then-chief executive and politically appointed officials took a voluntary pay cut of 5.38 per cent … to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the people," the spokesman said. "The economy has since turned around."
Chinese University political scientist Ivan Choy Chi-keung called the move "unwise".
"There's still a strong grievance among the public, especially after the 'umbrella movement'," he said, adding any pay rise should not happen until Leung showed results, and there was little promise shown in his policy address two days ago.
Meanwhile, with the Lunar New Year still a month away, civil servants may also get an early lai see after lawmakers gave their long-awaited, post-filibustering approvals to the government's funding request for pay rises that will be backdated to April.
But low-income households must wait at least another 15 months to get new allowances of up to HK$1,000, however, as the welfare minister says preparatory work is needed before launching the plan to help working families.
Pan-democrats said they had not meant to block requests to benefit the grass roots and criticised the government for refusing to bring forward the discussion of less controversial items.
"The administration will try to speed up the preparation and administrative procedures to roll out the scheme as soon as possible," Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung told lawmakers yesterday.
After months of delay, the Legislative Council's Finance Committee agreed yesterday to give civil servants in the middle and lower salary bands a 4.71 per cent pay rise, and those in the directorate and upper salary bands 5.96 per cent more.
The salary adjustments, totalling HK$8.9 billion, received Executive Council approval last year, but the pan-democrat filibustering stalled them from being approved, as usual, in the summer.
At the four-hour meeting, legislators sped up scrutiny of the funding requests so the government could deliver the adjusted wages, backdated to the start of the current financial year, to more than 160,000 civil servants at the end of this month.
However, staff at the government's subvented organisations, such as schools and the Hospital Authority, might need to wait for one or two more months because of administrative procedures, Secretary for the Civil Service Paul Tang Kwok-wai said.
The committee also granted the use of HK$110 million to prepare for the new low-income working family allowance scheme, which targets households with at least one member in full-time employment.
The plan was announced in Leung's policy address last year.
More than 200,000 families stand to benefit from the HK$3-billion-a-year scheme, subject to a variety of means tests.
They will receive a retrospective payment of six months from the date of application, but Cheung said 15 to 18 months of preparation would be needed.
