CONSTITUTION AND ADMINISTRATION
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The Civil Service Training Centre and the Senior Staff Course Centre will be merged to form the Civil Service Training and Development Institute in April 1996 to facilitate co-ordination of training activities and to enhance the use of training resources. It will strive to become a centre of excellence for training.
Transition to 1997
It is important to maintain continuity in the Civil Service through the transition to Chinese sovereignty, particularly at the management level. For this purpose the government has a well-organised staff planning system. The Secretary for the Civil Service holds regular meetings with Heads of Department and their Policy Secretaries to review succession planning and to identify and groom officers with potential for management, in order to ensure a steady supply of talent to fill senior positions.
To tap a larger pool of candidates for appointment to the Civil Service, the government strengthened the mechanism for assessment of non-local qualifications early in the year. The purpose was to improve assessment of non-local qualifications on a case-by-case basis so that candidates whose qualifications are of a standard comparable to those of a local candidate may apply for Civil Service posts. Where necessary, advice is sought from the Hong Kong Council for Academic Accredi- tation, particularly in cases where information on particular institutions is not readily available, such as those in China, Taiwan and other non-English-speaking countries.
The Basic Law states that only Chinese citizens among permanent residents of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region with no right of abode in any foreign country may fill Principal Official posts. There are 23 such posts, the most senior in the government. They include the Chief Secretary, Financial Secretary, Attorney General and policy secretaries.
The government is committed to filling all 23 posts well before 1997 by officers who are potentially qualified under the Basic Law. To achieve this, the government is developing a pool of talented local officers capable of filling posts at future Principal Official level and those immediately below. It has also been necessary to retire, or to supersede for promotion, a number of senior overseas officers under the Limited Compensation Scheme. At the end of the year only three of the 23 posts were still held by overseas officers.
To provide an additional assurance to civil servants on the security of pensions, a Civil Service Pension Reserve Fund was established in 1995. The fund reinforces the strong guarantees in the existing pensions legislation, the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. An initial amount of $7 billion has been injected into the fund, which will be topped up as and when necessary in order to maintain the balance at a minimum of one year's pension expenditure.
The China Training Programme, which aims to provide public servants with the necessary knowledge, understanding and skills to enable them to work effectively in the future Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, is being strengthened. The programme is divided into two parts, China Studies and Chinese language training.
The emphasis on China Studies is to cultivate knowledge about the social, economic and administrative systems in China through courses held in China or in Hong Kong, and through visits to institutes in China. The courses also serve to