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Following is a question by the Hon Cheung Man-kwong and a reply by the Secretary for Education and Manpower, Professor Arthur K C Li, in the Legislative Council today (June 27):
Questions:
The Government has decided to adjust the starting salaries of most grades in the civil service upwards by one to five pay points and increase the salary of civil servants by about 5% this year. Regarding the pay adjustments for staff in the institutions funded by the University Grants Committee and those under the Vocational Training Council ("subvented institutions"), will the Government inform this Council:
(a) whether additional funding will be provided to the subvented institutions for them to increase the salary of their staff; if so, of the respective amounts of additional funding to be provided to each subvented institution in respect of the above two adjustments;
(b) whether it knows if the pay adjustments for staff in subvented institutions will be the same as those for the civil service; if they are not the same, of the reasons for that; and
(c) how it ensures that subvented institutions will use the additional funding entirely for pay adjustments of their staff?
Reply:
Madam President,
(a) It has been the Government's established practice that following a civil service pay adjustment, the Government would adjust the amount of subventions provided to organisations whose subventions are subject to price-adjustment based on established formulae. Subject to the Finance Committee's approval of the 2007-08 Civil Service Pay Increase proposed by the Administration, the Government will increase the personal emolument portion of the recurrent subventions provided to the University Grants Committee (UGC)-funded institutions and the Vocational Training Council (VTC), based on the formulae adopted in past pay adjustment exercises. We estimate that annual additional recurrent grants of about $423 million and $74 million will be provided to the UGC-funded institutions and the VTC (including its skills centres) respectively in 2007-08 and beyond.
The staff salary structures of UGC-funded institutions and the VTC have been delinked from the civil service pay scales since 2003 and 2004 respectively. For this reason, the starting salaries adjustments recommended in the 2006 Civil Service Starting Salaries Survey (the 2006 exercise), as well as the normal conversion arrangement for affected civil servants, would not apply to these institutions automatically. That said, for institutions whose government subventions had been reduced as a result of the downward adjustment of the civil servants' starting salaries in April 2000 (the 2000 exercise), the Government will adjust the subventions provided to these institutions as appropriate from 2007-08 onwards. In doing so, the Government will take into account, among other things, the terms of the subvention agreements signed between the Government and the individual institutions and the amount of subventions that have been reduced since the 2000 exercise. As the Government had not clawed back any savings from the UGC sector during the 2000 exercise, there is no need to adjust the amount of subventions to the UGC sector in the current exercise. Meanwhile, we are discussing with the VTC the need to provide additional subventions to the Council, having regard to the amount of savings that have been returned to the Government in the past years in connection with the 2000 exercise.
(b)&(c) Staff recruitment and remuneration are matters within the autonomy of the UGC-funded institutions and the VTC. The salaries structures of these organisations have also been delinked from the civil service pay scales. While the Government will provide additional subventions to the UGC-funded institutions and the VTC for pay adjustment purpose based on the established formulae, the extent of pay adjustment to be implemented in these institutions will be decided by the institutions themselves in accordance with their established procedures. It would not be appropriate for the Government to get involved in the pay adjustment exercises of the individual institutions, or to give directions to them as to how the additional subventions should be used.
Ends/Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Issued at HKT 12:36
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