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(c)
(d)
whether the Senior Non-Expatriate Officers Association has made a request for improving the remuneration and benefits of policy secretaries; and
whether it has any plan to review the remuneration and conditions of service of policy secretaries?
Reply:
Mr President,
I shall answer the points seriatim.
(a)
(b)
Our policy and objective on civil service remuneration is to offer sufficient remuneration to attract, retain and motivate staff of a suitable calibre to provide the public with an effective and efficient service. Such remuneration should be regarded as fair both by civil servants and by the public which they serve. Within these parameters, broad comparability with the private sector is an important factor in setting civil service pay.
With regard to Branch Secretaries, the administration accepts that while any reasonable assessment of fair remuneration for civil servants should make reference to corresponding commercial packages, top directorate packages may not match those of some top executives in the private sector, given the difference in the nature of the service.
Other than external relativities, we also need to take account of the responsibilities and hence remuneration of other officers on the Directorate pay scale i.e. internal relativities. We have a number of grading factors we use to determine the classification of Departments and their Heads. Taken from the Tenth Report of the Standing Committee on Directorate Salaries and Conditions of Service, these are attached to the printed version of my reply. A recommendation was made in the same report that Branch Secretaries should be remunerated at a higher pay point than the Heads of the large civilian departments because of their clearly wider and heavier responsibilities. Currently, Heads of large civilian departments are remunerated at D7 and the Branch Secretaries are remunerated at D8.
We have not collected any up-to-date information to compare the remuneration and benefits of Branch Secretaries to those of senior executives in the private sector lately. Our practice has been for the annual directorate pay adjustments to follow those of the upper pay band and for there to be periodic reviews of whether directorate pay has fallen significantly out of step with changes in private sector pay. Our last such review was done in 1989.
I