TNAG-2668-FCO40-3865-Hong-Kong-Civil-Service-1993 — Page 152

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(f) the policy is wrong because Hong Kong people moving to other countries to which Hong Kong people commonly emigrate suffer no such employment discrimination by the Government's of those other countries;

(g) the policy is wrong because a locally born Chinese person, despite having lived overseas for much of his life, will nevertheless be accepted into Government service on local terms of service, thus making him immune from the non-renewal policy.

(13) The logical end result of the current localisation policy will be that no overseas officers will remain employed in the Civil Service. Overseas officers on permanent and pensionable terms will all eventually resign, retire or die. Overseas agreement service officers will be progressively discarded under the non-renewal policy (unless they are replaced by new overseas recruits with less experience, which makes a mockery of the policy). This systematic depletion of overseas officers would be at odds with the cosmopolitan nature of Hong Kong, and would create unease among the small, but important, portion of our community that is not Chinese. The position in the private sector is, in marked contrast, quite in keeping with Hong Kong's cosmopolitan nature.

(14) It is worth noting that we have received quiet support from individual Chinese colleagues who deplore the discriminatory basis of the policy and who feel patronized and embarrassed to benefit from the dismissal of their overseas colleagues.

Statistics

8.

Statistics on AECS membership and civil service strength are in the Appendix.

Survey and survey summary

9. A summary of the results of our recent localisation survey of members together with the survey letter and form are in the Appendix.

The current localisation non-renewal policy

Preference to locals on recruitment

10. The Government's policy of preferring local candidates when filling vacant offices derives from Colonial Regulation 18. That regulation defines "local candidates" to mean persons resident or serving in the Territory, a much wider meaning than permanent resident. Regulation 18 also states that "The claims of meritorious officers in the Public Service will generally take precedence over those of persons not already in the Public Service." We submit that the localisation policy which removes serving officers conflicts with the spirit of this provision.