Civil service chief vows to recruit new blood

The Secretary for the Civil Service, Ingrid Yeung, has vowed to go the extra mile in hiring new public servants, while acknowledging recruitment has not been easy. On RTHK's "Your Home Address" programme broadcast on Saturday, Yeung said the civil service workforce currently has about a 10 percent vacancy rate, due mainly to a shortage of labour in the market and the period being the peak of retirement. She said the administration could only hire locally, but made it clear it's working hard to recruit new blood. "I can trawl from the home base, I can only use local talents... Almost all employers in Hong Kong are snatching talents from each other, and the local graduates are very welcomed by employers in every sector," she said. "So we have to make extra efforts in recruitment and we have been making extra efforts. Last year, we have launched this scheme of allowing students in their penultimate year of study, not in their final year of study, to apply for civil service jobs as well." The minister also said the aim of a planned updated code of conduct for civil servants is to spell out what is expected of public workers. "It is in the civil servants' daily work when they come into contact with different political parties, with politicians, that they should remain neutral. With regard to the government's work, with regard to what the government is doing, they should support wholeheartedly. There is no room for them to say that, 'Oh, I'm neutral, I do not support and I do not object to this government initiative.'," Yeung said. According to the draft Civil Service Code, which includes 12 core values and standards of conduct, civil servants must not refuse to implement government policies they do not agree with, or adopt a passive attitude in implementing them.