XN000022-1974-03-28 — Page 2

Thursday, March 28, 1974

CONSULTANTS TO UNDERTAKE MAJOR TRAINING PROGRAMME

The McKinsey consultants will be returning to Hong Kong next

month on the first of two follow-up assignments.

Announcing this to-day, a government spokesman said that one

of their main tasks would be to undertake a major training programme,

which they were unable to do last year because of their pre-occupation

with the overhaul of administrative procedures and recommendations for

the reorganisation of the central government machinery.

"Before they left last year, they conducted four seminars for

a total of some 60 senior officers who were to be principally involved

in setting up and working the new management machinery envisaged," he

Baid.

"It has become clear that it is desirable that they should continue

and expand this initial training programme, at an opportune time, to

include more staff at senior and middle management levels. The object

will be to ensure that the changes introduced, and the principles and

practices involved, are fully understood and properly applied.

"The new machinery of government has now been set up, and the

policy and resource branches in the Secretariat are functioning along

the lines recommended. But much remains to be done to ensure that everyone

concerned is thoroughly familiar with the new procedures."

The spokesman said that each of the two visits planned for this

purpose would last three months. The first would commence in mid-April

and the second at the end of September,

/During these