Public Service Commission 'can probe all officials'

Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung said on Saturday the Public Service Commission would hold all government officials accountable if they were involved in serious incidents. She was speaking after the administration had this week proposed giving the commission, an independent advisory body, new powers to investigate serious problems involving civil servants, allowing its officials to enter government premises and demand that people provide assistance. A "heads of department accountability system" will also be implemented, in which investigations will be divided into two tiers based on severity of issues, but permanent secretary of bureaus are not defined as "department heads" and therefore will not fall into such a system. Speaking after attending a radio programme, Yeung said the mechanism is aimed at improving day-to-day management within bureaus and departments and that such job responsibilities rest with the head of a department and its senior management team. "Permanent secretaries assist directors of bureaus to formulate designs, mechanisms, or systems, or design legislation to implement policies. It is very rare that they are involved in the day-to-day management of departments," Yeung said. "In the unlikely event that a permanent secretary is involved in a problem in the management of a department, and that problem is serious enough to warrant investigation, it does not mean that the investigation team will not point out the responsibility of the permanent secretary," she added. Yeung said the new mechanism allows investigative results to be more credible and fair as an independent commission will be in charge of such probes, rather than the current procedure of having civil servants of a higher rank than the person under investigation conduct scrutiny. She added that the system would not be retroactive as the government will immediately handle any serious incident after it has been reported, rather than waiting for the new regulations to take effect. Edited by Thomas McAlinden