PUBLIC ORDER
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Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force
Manned entirely by part-time volunteers from all walks of life, the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Force has a proud history dating back to 1914. The traditional role of the force is to provide the regular police with additional manpower for such emergencies as natural disasters or public disorder.
Day to day, the Auxiliary Police are fully integrated with their regular counterparts and perform a wide variety of constabulary duties in the field of crime prevention, neighbourhood policing, traffic control, special duties and community relations. The Auxiliary Police also provide support in communication duties in police command and control centres.
The present strength of the force is 5 749 personnel out of a total establishment of 5 741 in all ranks. Approximately 14 per cent are women officers.
Throughout the year, the average daily turnout of auxiliaries for normal constabulary duty was 850 officers. Additionally, the force was called upon to provide 48 personnel each day for guard duties at various camps set up to house Vietnamese illegal immigrants.
Customs and Excise
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The Customs and Excise Department is organised into five major branches Headquarters Branch, the Operations Branch, the Investigation Branch, the Trade Controls Branch and the Civil Secretariat. It has an establishment of 3 922 posts and is primarily responsible for the collection and protection of revenue payable under the Dutiable Commodities Ordinance, the suppression of illicit trafficking in narcotics, the prevention and detection of smuggling, and the protection of intellectual property protection legislation.
Revenue Protection
The department is responsible for collecting revenue on six groups of dutiable commodities in Hong Kong - alcoholic liquor, tobacco, hydrocarbon oil, methyl alcohol, non-alcoholic beverages and cosmetics. In 1991, revenue of $6,219 million was collected on these dutiable commodities, an increase of $822 million (or 15 per cent) as compared with $5,397 million in 1990.
Immediately after the tabling of the 1991 budget in March announcing drastic duty increases, among other things, on tobacco and hydrocarbon oil, there was an upsurge in the amount of duty-free cigarettes brought in from China by local residents making multiple trips each day across the land border. There were also increased cases of substantial amounts of diesel oil carried in enlarged fuel tanks by vehicles returning from China. For revenue protection, new control measures were imposed. Local residents were allowed to claim duty-free concessions for cigarettes only if they had spent more than 24 hours outside Hong Kong. Maximum limits were also set on the quantity of duty-exempted diesel oil that the respective class of vehicle could carry when arriving from China. Both measures proved to be effective in preventing a bigger revenue drain through exploitation of the duty-free concession.
Anti-narcotics Operations
The department continued to co-operate closely with the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, overseas customs authorities and other law enforcement agencies in the prevention and suppression of illicit trafficking in narcotics.