ICAC’s failure to appoint operations chief is hurting staff morale, former agency official says
Daniel Li Ming-chak, the ex-operations chief of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, says decision to extending the acting period for Ricky Yau Shu-chun was ‘very odd’
Staff morale is suffering at the city’s graft buster due to its failure to appoint an official head of operations, a former anti-corruption agency official has said.
The remarks by Daniel Li Ming-chak, former operations chief of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), came after the agency extended the acting period of the current acting operations head, Ricky Yau Shu-chun, for three more months in July. At the time, Yau had already been in the post for a year.
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“In my opinion it is very odd,” Li said after an interview with veteran Hong Kong democrat Emily Lau Wai-hing on online media ourTV.hk.
“There is an expectation from the officer acting in this position. At the same time the staff within the department would expect somebody in that position to be confirmed, rather than acting in the position for administrative convenience. It’s important. It has to do with the morale.”
Last year, ICAC went through a series of controversial shake-ups, including the removal of operations head Rebecca Li Bo-lan from her post in July, which sparked an uproar.
Rebecca Li resigned after the commissioner Simon Peh Yun-lu terminated her acting appointment and asked her to step back into her previous role as director of investigations for the public sector.
Pro-democracy lawmakers linked her demotion to a probe she was leading into the HK$50 million payment that then chief executive Leung Chun-ying received from the Australian company UGL.