Remarks on the motion on
“Expectations for the new Chief Executive”
at the Legislative Council
on 22 June 2005

Madam President,

Following the official announcement of the appointment of Mr Donald Tsang as the new Chief Executive by the Premier Wen Jiabao for the remaining two years of the 2 nd term, some pundits have already started the guessing game by betting on his winning a subsequent 5-year term. The strong confidence accorded to Mr Tsang is coupled with high expectations on him. As Mr Tsang will agree, his performance in the coming two years must have a vital bearing on his being re-elected in 2007. Inevitably, Mr Tsang will have to focus on the most important issues.

Foremost among them is the unemployment problem. Although the overall unemployment rate is improving, the current 5.7% is still high by our standard. Much worse than this is the persistent high double-digit unemployment rate of about 15% in the construction sector, which has long been the backbone of our economy, is particularly disappointing. The problem affects more than 1 million people if the family members are included. It is an important public issue, not just an issue of one particular sector.

It is therefore imperative for the government to dish out more infrastructure projects and building works while at the same time expediting the implementation of the approved projects. Indeed, many projects, such as the South East Kowloon Development, KCR Shatin Central Route , MTR Island South Line and 169 projects of the two defunct municipal councils, have been dragging along for too long. They, together with other projects including Harbour Area Treatment Scheme Stage 2 and West Kowloon Cultural District Development, should be given priority.

I understand that numerous projects cannot commence due to lack of recurrent consequences. Mr Tsang must look into the problem and take appropriate actions to ensure adequate recurrent expenditure made available to government departments. He should also consider adopting the Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) to encourage private companies to initiate more new public projects with private funding, which have not been included in the existing facilities or may not be built by the government on its own in the foreseeable future.

As a long-serving civil servant himself for most of his career, Mr Tsang should be well aware of the problems that the civil servants are facing. The morale of civil servants has been adversely affected by rapid downsizing, inflating workload, introduction of contract terms and serious succession problems over the past 8 years. I believe that, with his civil servant background, Mr Tsang should be in a better position to communicate with the civil servants with a view to straightening out the differences between the Administration and the staff side.

For enhancing the professionalism in the civil service, it is time for the government to inject more professional expertise into the Administrative Officer (A.O.) Grade. In order words, the government ought to consider providing a proper dovetail for senior professional officers to join the A.O. Grade without going through open recruitment for lower ranks.

As for professional staff like engineers, it is high time to resume recruiting them on permanent terms with the improvement in the fiscal deficit problem. In the past 5 years, young engineers having completed their professional training in the government were not admitted into the Civil Service. This is a total waste in terms of the resources already spent on their training. Those fortunate enough were offered contract terms only while the rest had to leave the government. The practice has resulted in a succession problem which has become more and more obvious.

To enhance the competitiveness of Hong Kong , we must strengthen our higher education. In this regard, the government should consider increasing the intake of full time non-local students to our tertiary institutions as the arrangement offers many benefits to our universities. These include internationalisation of our student population and giving additional resources in form of extra tuition fee income to our universities because these students from outside will have to pay higher tuition fees. I have raised this issue many times at this Council and I understand that the government has already raised the quota for non-local students from 4% to 8% and subsequently to 10%. But I believe like many universities in other countries, that the quota could be aggressively revised upward as long as the arrangement will cause no adverse impact on the learning opportunities of local students.

Madam President, time does not permit me to go on with my expectation list. But the above mentioned subjects are the areas that, I believe, require Mr Tsang's immediate attention and actions.

With these remarks, I so submit.