XN000022-1996-05-23 — Page 6

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Question: (on the reward scheme)

Governor: Perhaps the Commissioner could tell you about that afterwards. Is that all right?

Question: The counter proposal from the civil servants union, do you think that nine per cent pay rise is reasonable?

Governor: We've got as you know an established way of dealing with public service pay, with civil service pay, basing our conclusions on the pay trend survey every year. and I think on the whole people in both the public sector and the private sector, our

excellent civil service and our admirable tax payers think that it's a pretty fair system. Now we're going through the system in the customary manner and eventually a recommendation will come to the Executive Council and the Executive Council will have to form a view. But I think that it's important that the system that we've got should be retained; nobody's questioned its integrity, but of course we'll listen to what the civil service unions have to say and in listening to what they say we'll convey to them our view that the present system of determining pay is a very good one. We have an excellent civil service in Hong Kong. It's right that the civil service should be properly rewarded, but it is also right that the civil service should recognise what people outside the civil service are getting paid in comparable jobs, and that we should try as far as possible to be fair in the judgements that we make as well as prudent about public expenditure.

Question: Are you worried that the morale of the civil servants will be affected ...?

Governor: I think what our excellent civil service wants is a fair pay deal and I think it recognises that the rest of the community regards the existing mechanism for determining civil service pay as the best way of achieving that fairness.

Question: A five-year-old girl has spent 10 days in Victoria Prison taken from Whitehead among the group of the so-called trouble makers. Do you have any

comment on that?

Secretary for Security, Mr Peter Lai: The first I've heard of this report was this morning and since I've heard it, I have asked the Refugee Co-ordinator to investigate whether there is any truth to that, and if so, that we should take immediate action to ensure that it doesn't happen. Since I was out of the office the whole of the afternoon, I'm not quite sure how far he's got with it, but I'm sure that he'll be able to answer that at a later position on that very quickly if you would care to ring.

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