ad
(hamely
unparallel elsewhere, that if an officer is shown to
be living beyond his official salary or to be
accumulating funds out of proportion to his official
salary, there is an cnus on him to explain how this
has come about. In the absence of a satisfactory
explanation he is liable to dismissal. All communi-
cations alleging corruption are considered by a
Committee of senior Government officers who decide
(or advise higher authority) in what manner such
allegations should be investigated. Proof of corruption
is rarely easy to adduce, but wherever legally admissible
evidence of corruption is available, a criminal prose-
cution is invariably instituted. As a result of such
prosecutions, seven members of the public service were
convicted of corruption charges during 1966/67. Some-
times the evidence available is not sufficient to
justify criminal proceedings but may still be adequate
to justify a disciplinary inquiry into the actions of
a public servant and during the same year, twenty-three
public servants were dismissed as a result of such
inquiries. The Hong Kong Government is continually
seeking new ways and means of dealing with the problem.
A
It is easy to see that the danger of corruption
amongst the Hawker Control Force is high because the
complicated regulations that they have to administer
may not be fully understood by the poorly educated
hawkers with whom they have to deal. If those who have
the confidence of the hawker community would help to
explain what the regulations are and why they are
necessary, it would do much to help eliminate the
opportunities for corruption. In the longer term, the
younger generation, born in Hong Kong, better educated
and lacking their parents' experience of corruption in
pre-communist China, will, we hope, reject corruption
as a way of life, whether they be members of the public
generally or of the public service.
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