- 3-
Proposals to give effect to judgement on AECS court case
The Government put forward to the Senior Civil Service Council today (Friday) a package of proposed measures that will give effect to the Court of Appeal judgement on various arrangements to implement the localisation policy.
The Deputy Secretary for the Civil Service, Ms Sandra Lee, met members of the council at a special meeting this afternoon.
The Association of Expatriate Civil Servants (AECS) sought a judicial review in late 1994 of various arrangements introduced by the Government to implement the localisation policy. The case was eventually brought before the Court of Appeal which handed down its judgement on November 22, 1996.
=
"The package of measures has been drawn up against four basic principles we need to comply with the Court's judgement, we should balance the interests of different groups of officers; the measures should not create disproportionate management problems or set undesirable precedents; and the resources required should be realistic and reasonable," Ms Lee said.
The proposals cover, amongst others, the lifting of the promotion restriction on overseas agreement officers who transferred to local agreement terms ("the transferees") a few years ago; the granting of personal salaries and increments to transferees who had been demoted upon transfer ("the demotees") until their promotion back to their original rank; allowing the transferees to apply for further transfer to local permanent and pensionable (P&P) terms and introducing modified criteria for transfer to P&P terms that feature, inter alia, a Chinese language requirement and more detailed specification on the existing criteria.
The Government had considered carefully whether it should reinstate demotees to their original rank and re-promote those transferees who had been affected by the promotion restriction, but concluded that these would not be practical as they would give rise to resource and management problems.
"Reinstatement involves the creation of posts in the absence of a functional need. This will be a major departure from existing policy and will complicate the management structure in departments. To promote demotees automatically when the next vacancies arise also creates practical problems and is not entirely consistent with our established principle of promotion through fair competition between eligible contenders." Ms Lee said.