Hong Kong's Civil Servants Reject Pay Cut Calls

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

31 October 2002

The Hong Kong Standard reported on Wednesday that the SAR's civil servants are standing firm in the face of pay cut threats, arguing that as they are not the cause of the government's massive budget deficit, they should not be made to suffer in order to ease it.

Speaking on Tuesday, Executive Councillor, James Tien announced plans to lobby the civil service unions for further salary reductions of between 6% and 7%. However, following so close on the heels of the 1.58% to 4.42% cut implemented this month, Mr Tien's request has put the government employees in a defiant mood.

'Another paycut? No way,' Leung Chau-ting, the Chairman of the Federation of Civil Service Unions responded. 'The huge deficit is not caused by us, and it's unreasonable to ask staff to bear the brunt. One may argue it is failed governance that caused the deficit problem.'

An - unsurprisingly unpopular - alternative or supplementary cost-cutting measure could be to reduce the number of civil servants employed by the jurisdiction's authorities.

Speaking to the HK Standard yesterday, Felix Cheung, chairman of the Hong Kong Civil Servants General Union, admitted that:

'Reducing the size [of the civil service workforce] is lawful. We can't raise any objection to that. But the government needs to be careful about how much services would be affected so that the public won't blame the civil servants for failing to deliver.'

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