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Following is the transcript of a media session given by the Secretary for the Civil Service, Mr Joseph W P Wong, today (May 20) on the second Voluntary Retirement (VR) Scheme:

Secretary: The second VR Scheme will close today. We'll know the precise figures as well as the breakdown by grade or rank by the end of this week or early next week when we receive all the returns from departments. We have done a very rough check with a number of major departments last weekend and at that time, the updated estimate was around 4,000 applications.

Reporter: ... What are your targets? ... what would you do ...?

Secretary: Well, we had no target for the Second VR Scheme. We had a figure of 7,000 which was put to the Finance Committee for the purpose of securing funds. Because it is a VR Scheme, it is not possible to set a target. We only have an overall target of 10 per cent reduction in the size of the civil service by (the year of) 06-07. As I said before, we will take account of the outcome of the second VR, we'll do an overall assessment as to whether or not there are things we'll need to do more to achieve the 06-07 10 per cent reduction target.

(Please also refer to the Chinese transcript)

End/Tuesday, May 20, 2003

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