2
3.
Mr Wong Lam, while welcoming the
Government's
efforts to slow down the growth of the Civil Service,
expressed his concern over the continued expansion of the
Police Force and suggested that preferential treatment
might have been accorded
expense of other,
that this is not
to
the
Police Force at the
smaller departments.
I can assure him
the case. A thorough examination was
conducted of each department's request
request to determine the
minimum number of new posts necessary for new services
and facilities. In the case of the Police Force, this
carried out in detail, and at a high
examination was
level, and I am
satisfied that the Force has been given
no more than is necessary to meet essential requirements
and that no other department has suffered as a result.
4.
For those departments which find they need
additional resources to maintain essential services
intact (and the Secretary
for Security has mentioned
one), attention will now have to be concentrated on
increased productivity, somehow defined, on
staff within departments
more
and
imaginative deployment of
units and on bold, if controversial, redeployment of
staff across departmental boundaries. At the same time,
there must be scope, or at any rate arguably so, for the
elimination
developing
obsolete.
of tasks
technology
which the passage of time and
render less essential
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