We translated the news article below from Oriental Daily into English and would like to let our English readers know how terribly serious the corrupt situation in our Hong Kong civil service is. the-sun.on.cc/cnt/news/20130617/00414_001.html ====================================== TOPIC:- Abusing the public trust damages the system and disciplines; wasting public money can’t escape from accountability ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Hong Kong civil service had been well known in its reputation of honesty and efficiency. In recent years, its misconduct problems have been occurred without interruption. Recently it was accused of a sore loser who never accepted defeat on the pay increases issue. The already downcast civil service image becomes the worst come to the worst. Earlier the Health Department was even being exposed the scandal of abusing the public trust to approve a female Assistant Director to take one year full pay study leave to engage in her own personal study to take her own barrister pupillage training, involving public money of 1.6 million, making the public raise eyebrows. The original iron rice bowls of the civil servants who have largely overpaid and got paid on time with multi-benefits still include these hidden profits taking public money for their private giving and private accepting, largely squandering taxpayers’ money. In face of widespread criticisms, the authority explained incoherently, and even made the thing become worst. At the very beginning, the Health Department argued that its frontline staff repeatedly encountered legal challenges and its department needed to respond to international regulations and amend legislations in recent years, so it needed to cultivate its own experts with both legal and health professional knowledge and so on; until it was revealed that other departments encountering similar legal problems would seek legal advice from the Justice Department, and wouldn’t arrange their own staff to take barrister training, officials withdrew and modified their previous arguments saying that it was because of that female official’s "Own Personal Interest" and coupled with her previous studies making use of her own personal resources, she just owed a barrister pupillage training step, so her supervisor proposed to grant her one year full pay study leave to be approved by the department. The authority gave different explanations in different occasions. On the contrary, it proved to the public that the case was not related to the so-called training up experts with legal knowledge. The Health Department lied through its teeth by opening its eyes up to conceal the truth. It was not able to deceive the sharp eyes of the public. "Oriental Daily News Public Poll" shows that, regarding the Health Department granting one year full pay study leave to a female Assistant Director to engage in her own personal barrister training, 46% of respondents lashed waste of public money; 25% of respondents were dissatisfied with civil servants who enjoyed high wages with good benefits, but still didn’t attend to their own proper duties; 16% of respondents said that the case had damaged the image of civil service. Obviously, the clever talk and ingratiating manner by the Health Department has incurred public outrage. In fact, the mastermind behind the scandal of abusing the public trust in the Health Department was Lam Ping-yan, the former Director who created lots of management chaos during his tenure. In the eve of his retirement in May last year, he used his residual power to approve that senior female official to take one year full pay study leave, and take public money to do a friendly gesture without extra cost to himself. Moreover, that senior female official had repeatedly been approved more than one time to take full pay study leave, the longest one was one year and the shortest one was one day, and completely didn’t attend to her own proper duties. Among the above poll respondents, 40% believed that the Audit Commission should involve in the investigation; 29% worried about setting a bad precedent for other departments to follow suit; 24% even questioned that Lam Ping-yan used all sorts of pretexts to attain his private ends by abusing his position. Obviously, Lam Ping-yan didn’t strictly control so had damaged the system and disciplines of civil service leaving an awful mess. Whether Lam Ping-yan had discriminated in favor of his subordinate, and what the relationship between them was, the Audit Commission must investigate the case to get to the bottom. Not the most ugly, only more ugly. The management of Health Department has been chaotic. Recently it was exposed the scandal that there was a senior doctor secretly engaged in teaching wine tasting courses without prior approval, and allegedly violated the codes of conduct of civil service. In this regard, 41% of respondents lashed the Health Department of riddled with gaping wounds; 30% of respondents said that the unhealthy trend was going from bad to worse; 20% of respondents described the Health Department as no one was responsible to correctly rule. Just as some scholars pointed out that the case has affected the public impression to the image of civil service, and that civil servants enjoyed high pay and got paid on time, but recently were still dissatisfied with their pay increases, and even there was someone who was approved one year full pay study leave, relatively speaking, the average wage earners just can retain their positions with their wages suspended for their own personal studies. The public will question whether the benefits of civil service are too excessive. Ice of three feet is not the result of one cold day. The Health Department’s pandemonium is just a tip of the iceberg of the corruption in civil service’s system and disciplines. If the upper beam is not straight, the lower ones will go aslant. Sir Donald Tsang, the former Chief Executive accepted advantages and entertainment, had illicit relations with some tycoons, and misappropriated public money to travel around the world; Mr. Timothy Tong, the former ICAC Commissioner of course followed suit to booze and grandly eat, crazily give gifts and receive gifts, and other civil servants would inevitably follow suit. The degree of an honest and clean Hong Kong getting worse with each passing day has its own long history.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:11:55 +0000
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