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Pilot schemes have been implemented in the Housing Department and Home Affairs Department to develop practical steps to promote, on a systematic basis, the wider use of Chinese on the ground.
To implement other recommendations of the report, a consolidated bid for $131 million would be put forward in the 1996-97 draft estimates to purchase computer hardware and software for Chinese word processing, Mr Sze said.
Existing secretarial staff will be encouraged and facilitated to provide Chinese word processing services while the guides to appointment to the various secretarial grades will be strengthened to include Chinese word processing as a skill that the secretarial staff is expected to acquire.
In view of the priority given to developing a biliterate and trilingual civil service, the Chinese Language Division (CLD) will be hived off from the Office of the Director of Administration to become an independent agency and policy responsibility for Chinese language will be transferred to the Secretary for the Civil Service.
With the upgrading of CLD's status, staff resources at the senior level will be strengthened and the post of Commissioner for Chinese Language will be retitled as Commissioner for Official Languages and it will be upgraded from an Administrative Officer Staff Grade 'C' post to a Staff Grade 'B' post.
"The purpose is to give it a clear identity and a more authoritative status to assume a strategic and co-ordinating role in developing the language capability of the civil service," Mr Sze said.
The Working Group will be transformed into a steering committee with the task to advise and steer the revamped CLD and to identify further steps to improve the Chinese capability of the civil service.
On training, the report pointed out that Government's aim should be to train as many officers as possible. However, given resources constraints, priority should be given to those officers who have operational needs and it should start from the top down.
With this in mind, the Working Group recommended that:
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Private notes are available after approval.