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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, after attending a radio programme today (October 31) on the possibility of relaxing the recruitment freeze for some civil service ranks and grades:
Reporter: Mr Wong, could you tell us about the Government plan to reopen the recruitment for Executive Officer ...?
Secretary: We will continue to maintain a general recruitment freeze on the whole of the Civil Service but we will consider relaxing the freeze perhaps for a slightly larger number of civil service ranks and grades. This is really to anticipate and to meet an increasing unexpected demand, in some areas such as food safety, for new services.
Reporter: How many people are we talking about and how would the Government proceed with this plan?
Secretary: I would say that in order to implement the various initiatives laid down by the Chief Executive in his Policy Address, we probably would need to create an additional 12 directorate posts within the establishment and probably close to 1000 non-directorate posts, that is perhaps in addition to some of the positions we need to fill as a result of retirement or resignation.
(Please also refer to the Chinese transcript.)
Ends/Monday, October 31, 2005
Issued at HKT 13:32
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