Hong Kong's 155,000 civil servants will not get a pay rise, at least for now.
The decision was announced Tuesday by Secretary for the Civil Service Denise Yue Chung-yee following a four-year review of civil servants' salary scales involving consultations with civil service organizations.
The government concluded that changes to existing pay scales are unnecessary, contrary to market expectations.
A government-commissioned survey conducted by a private consultancy compared the pay levels of civil servants with those of 97 companies in the private sector. At April 1 last year, the salary discrepancies between five different job levels were all within a 5 percent range.
Yue said the Executive Council had advised that the slight difference in the pay scales did not warrant an adjustment.
"To finance salary adjustments, taxpayers would have had to fork out an extra HK$180 million a year," Yue said, while noting that civil servants had received three pay cuts since the handover.
She denied that the survey was tailor-made for a purpose or a waste of time, saying it would be inappropriate to adjust all salaries based on a difference of just a few percentage points.
"I think we all agree that no survey could be 100 percent correct, and factors like private companies' figures - that could be faulty for whatever reason - could lead to the survey findings being tilted one way or another," she said.
Yue stressed that the survey was based on a "balanced and fair system" and was not aimed at benefiting or undermining civil servants.
If the bureau had adjusted salaries strictly according to the survey's findings, about 55,000 civil servants - from job levels one and three, or the relatively lower ranks - would have received pay cuts of between 3 and 5percent, while about 100,000 civil servants - from job levels two, four and five and upwards - would have received pay increases of between 1 and 5 percent.
Yue said similar surveys will be conducted in future at six-year intervals.
She said civil service salaries, however, may be reviewed by the end of the year, depending on the outcome of an ongoing related survey which looks into the pay trends of private firms.
Any pay adjustments for the civil service require approval from the Legislative Council's Finance Committee.
Leung Chau-ting, chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Civil Servant Unions, complained that lower-ranked civil servants were not sufficiently protected under the government's 5 percent discrepancy system.
Under this arrangement, salary adjustments will not be made if the difference between the pay scales in the public and private sectors is found to be less than 5 percent.
He proposed adopting a flexible 5- to 10-percent range instead, which would depend on the economic situation at the time of the adjustments being made.
