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LCQ20: Hiring of part-time interpreters
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     Following is a question by the Hon Alice Mak and a written reply by the Secretary for the Civil Service, Mr Clement Cheung, in the Legislative Council today (December 9):

Question:

     At present, some government departments and public organisations hire part-time interpreters to assist their staff in communicating with people from ethnic minorities. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:

(1) whether the Government has maintained lists of part-time interpreters; if it has, of the government departments responsible for maintaining such lists and the respective numbers of part-time interpreters on such lists (broken down by language/dialect of interpretation service), as well as the government departments and public organisations that make reference to such lists;

(2) of the total number of occasions on which government departments hired part-time interpreters and the total number of service hours involved, as well as the average number of service hours per interpreter, broken down by language/dialect of interpretation service, in each of the past three years; whether it knows the relevant statistics in respect of public organisations;

(3) whether the government departments mentioned in (1) currently have left full-time or half-time interpreter posts unfilled and hire part-time interpreters to provide the interpretation services concerned; if so, of the titles of such posts and the reasons why recruitment exercises for filling such posts have not been conducted; and

(4) of the current remunerations offered by government departments to part-time interpreters; of the number of adjustments of the remunerations for them in the past 10 years, as well as the rate(s) of adjustment and their revised remunerations after each adjustment; whether their remunerations were reduced in 2003 in tandem with the salary reduction of the civil service; if so, whether their remunerations have been subsequently adjusted upward following the increases of salaries for the civil service?

Reply:

President,

     The Civil Service Bureau is responsible for supporting government departments on use of the two official languages (written Chinese, written English, Cantonese, Putonghua and spoken English), including translation and interpretation services. As for similar support involving other languages, such as employment of part-time interpreters to assist the staff in communicating with ethnic minorities, individual departments will hire external services in accordance with the Stores and Procurement Regulations based on their own requirements.

     Since government departments have not collected or compiled such statistical information as lists of part-time interpreters, the number of occasions and service hours for which they were hired, and adjustments of remunerations, no detailed itemised data is available.

Ends/Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Issued at HKT 16:00

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