SCS speaks on Government's first drill under "government-wide mobilisation" level (with videos)
******************************************************************************************
Reporter: What key takeaways has the mobilisation team got in this drill, and how would you personally assess the effectiveness? And for those involved, is there an effective way of the drill? How was it different from the normal drill, like the Police, the firefighters? You mentioned about the number of 10 000 civil servants. Is there a particular reason why that was the number?
Secretary for the Civil Service: The difference between this drill and the normal drills conducted by the operations departments is that this drill focuses on communication. The first and most important thing in government-wide level mobilisation is to be able to, within a very short period of time, successfully communicate. The fact that the colleagues are called upon to act, if we cannot do that within a short period, if the communication is not successful, then we will not be able to mobilise the required staff. Communication, whether it is effective, is of utmost importance. So this drill is about communication. It's about how fast the colleagues can be called out. It's about whether they can be successfully contacted during a normal work situation. So this is different from the normal drills that the operations departments conduct in which they mainly practice how to deal with actual situations on the ground. For a situation in which we need to mobilise a large number of government staff, probably it is very extraordinary, and it's very difficult to predict what sort of extraordinary situations, whether it's a pandemic like the COVID-19, or whether it's natural disaster, or whether some other major happenings. But the call, for sure, have to be effective. So this is about the callout.
We are involving all government departments and bureaux, and all the government departments and bureaux have to roster their staff to take part at this level of mobilisation. We are estimating that about five per cent of the whole of the civil service and government staff should be mobilised as the first level. So, that is why we are involving about 10 000 staff.
Effectiveness, my assessment of it. We are still waiting for reports from departments to come in, but as far as the 300 staff had to gather at the North Point Community Hall by 3pm today, when I was there, I saw that they could all arrive punctually; some well before the required timing and they arrived in a very good shape. They received the notifications successfully, and they knew what was happening. As far as these 300 are concerned, the drill has proven that the communication was effective.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Thursday, February 16, 2023
Issued at HKT 23:43
Issued at HKT 23:43
NNNN