TNAG-1362-FCO40-1808-Hong-Kong-Hansard-reports-and-minutes-of-the-meetings-of-the-1985 — Page 194

2

3.

Mr Wong Lam, while welcoming the

Government's

efforts to slow down the growth of the Civil Service,

expressed his concern over the continued expansion of the

Police Force and suggested that preferential treatment

might have been accorded

expense of other,

that this is not

to

the

Police Force at the

smaller departments.

I can assure him

the case. A thorough examination was

conducted of each department's request

request to determine the

minimum number of new posts necessary for new services

and facilities. In the case of the Police Force, this

carried out in detail, and at a high

examination was

level, and I am

satisfied that the Force has been given

no more than is necessary to meet essential requirements

and that no other department has suffered as a result.

4.

For those departments which find they need

additional resources to maintain essential services

intact (and the Secretary

for Security has mentioned

one), attention will now have to be concentrated on

increased productivity, somehow defined, on

staff within departments

more

and

imaginative deployment of

units and on bold, if controversial, redeployment of

staff across departmental boundaries. At the same time,

there must be scope, or at any rate arguably so, for the

elimination

developing

obsolete.

of tasks

technology

which the passage of time and

render less essential

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