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Thursday, March 14, 1974
On promotion, he said:
"Increasingly, it is the practice in
business to bring on the bright quickly and this should be followed
in the goverment service."
He warned that if an increase in the retiring age was contemplated,
accelerated promotion was a pre-requisite or it would end up with good
people leaving and ineffective upper echelons.
Turning to committee meetings of senior government officials,
Mr. Williams said: "Many of these go on for too long a time. With proper
preparation fow committee meetings should last much longer than one hour."
He added that it was not easy to set a value on people's time,
but tying down 10 people for more than three hours, as he had often scen
happen, would be expensive.
Hr. Willians suggested that a report should be made to the
Colonial Secretary for any meeting which lasts more than 4 hours.
"By this simple procedure some slow moving and inefficient
areas in government might well be revealed," he said.
Having said all this Mr. Williams acknowledged that by comparisons
elsewhere Hong Kong had a good public service.
"But as it costs 43 per cent of our recurrent expenditure, wo
must see this vast sun is well spent, " he said.
On inflation, Mr. Williams shared the great concern of his unofficial
colleagues on the problem.
He indicated that he remained worried at the threat of inflation
generated internally.
/Regarding
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