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Reply:
Mr President,
It is certainly true that Mrs Lily Yam Pui-ying, who had been announced to be the next Commissioner for Transport, has no direct experience in transport matters. What she has is a great deal of experience relevant to the duties of Commissioner for Transport. To require directly relevant professional experience for appointments to Head of Department positions would make it a very inflexible system. If anything we need to move in the direction of a more open directorate.
In the transport field we have seen time and again that issues can become items of heated public debate very quickly and that political sensitivity presentational skills in addition to management capabilities are key attributes in the Commissioner for Transport. It was for that very reason that the post was designated as an Administrative Officer post in 1981.
As to the two specific elements to this question:
(a)
(b)
First, let me say that it is neither our policy nor practice to treat D6 posts as training posts. Our policy, as always, is to find the best officer for the job. It is however often the case that officers selected to fill such posts are those with potential to rise higher, and to that extent, the experience gained in D6 posts will provide valuable training for the future; and
as to how long it would take on average for an appointee with no previous specialist experience to settle into the post, this depends very much on the officer and the post in question. Given that the main attributes of a Head of Department are leadership, the management of resources, political acumen, and presentational skills it should come quite naturally to an appointee from the Administrative Service who would have acquired these qualities from broad range of postings he or she would have had. We would expect such an officer to "hit the ground running" and be fully effective within a short time.
End/Wednesday, May 3, 1995