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Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government has reiterated that it is striving towards its goal of downsizing civil service personnel by 5,000 by March 2007.

Officials said yesterday that it aimed to trim the civil service establishment from 167,000 to 162,000 by scrapping some posts and not recruiting fresh personnel for others.

"The previous and the serving chief executives had vowed to reduce the civil service establishment and that pledge is still valid today," Secretary for Civil Service Denise Yue said yesterday.

"In the 2005 Policy Address, it was reiterated that the establishment should be trimmed to about 160,000 by March 2007 and we are working towards that goal," she told a Legislative Council (LegCo) panel.

But owing to manpower shortage caused by a ban on recruitments in recent years, the Civil Service Bureau may seek the chief executive's approval to increase the establishment size a little to provide a smooth and efficient service. Also, the higher-than-expected staff turnover rate and the introduction of new services make it necessary to start open recruitments again.

It is necessary, too, to shorten the five-year recruitment ban on 229 civil service job grades identified for the second phase of the voluntary retirement scheme (VRS), introduced in 2003.

The services to be introduced include a food safety center to deal with a possible outbreak of bird flu or any other disease, and two new economic and trade offices in Shanghai and Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The government will consider granting some temporary and contract employees permanent civil servant status in order to meet the needs, Yu said.

"In the coming months, we will carry out a thorough review and may seek (the government's) approval to increase the size of the establishment slightly above 160,000 by the end of the year," she said.

Legislators in general were pleased to know that 160,000 was not a fixed, rigid target. But they criticized the way such a figure had been reached, saying it lacked a solid basis.

The government's previous across-the-board measures have affected staff morale, Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions' Wong Kwok-hing said.

The government should have anticipatory measures in place to retain talented people and not just try to save money by hiring contract staff.

Confederation of Trade Unions' Lee Cheuk-yan said the target of 160,000 should not have been there in the first place and VRS was a waste of resources. "The 160,000 target was merely a top-down command for the departments to follow and the staff were not consulted at all," he said.

"Again, money was so unwisely spent because some who opted for VRS were reemployed by the government on contract and non-civil service terms."

(China Daily HK Edition April 21, 2006)