The SCMP reports…
Lawmakers have questioned the need to create three more positions in the office of Hong Kong’s leader amid the budget deficit, but an official has stressed the roles will support a “new culture” of better informing the public about policies.
The planned recruitment involved two information officers and a driver, who will cost taxpayers HK$2.66 million (US$342,000) annually in total.
…Kevin Choi, permanent secretary from the Chief Executive’s Office, sought to justify the new positions…
“The work [to be performed by the new hires] could support the chief executive under the new culture and try to make the public and citizens directly informed of the policy,” he said.
…Choi added the term length of the two information officer positions was limited to three years, with plans to review their duration and explore opportunities for reduction.
Lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-sun told the Post that some people perceived current government communication as one-sided, reflecting only the viewpoint of authorities.
“Unless hired employees are able to facilitate two-way communication, they should not be employed,” he said.
The government could tell patriotic-but-mildly-curious lawmakers that their questions indicate ignorance of policy and therefore confirm the need for the new high-paid PR bims.
Helpfully, the SCMP photo shows the three hirees (possibly) plodding unenthusiastically towards their new jobs at Tamar. But there the keen journalism ends. The reporters appear not to have asked the government what the two new ‘information officers’ will do all day, how they can possibly need their own driver, and what sort of salaries the three will be getting.
We can sort of guess that their salaries will be around a million bucks each for the IOs, plus half a million for the driver – since the other overheads must be minimal. At HK$83,000 a month, this would be barely 2.8 times the mean household income for Hong Kong, which is an insulting pittance by civil service standards.
More important – what exactly is this ‘new culture’? If it’s not new, it’s just another in a long line of attempts (dating back to Tung Chee-hwa’s time) to convince the public that the government is right and everyone else is wrong. If it is genuinely different, that’s perhaps even worse.
You are correct that this new culture is different. It is no longer “the government is right and everyone else is wrong.” It is now “the government is right and it’s dangerous to have any other opinion”.
“The planned recruitment involved two information officers and a driver, who will cost taxpayers HK$2.66 million (US$342,000) annually in total.”
Bend over, clench your teeth and take it, People of Hong Kong! This is nothing…after all, look at all the ramming and pain Americans are more than happy to endure because their Dear Orange Leader says they need to “eat a little bitter” now before everything gets rosy and wonderful again!
“Dear Orange Leader says they need to “eat a little bitter” now before everything gets rosy and wonderful again!”
Unless Dear Orange Leader is somehow able to override US state election laws and restrict elections only to people deemed patriots by an unelected body of republicans plus also amend the constitution to allow for a third term, he will be gone in a few years.
Meanwhile the shitshow going on in HK will never go away and we will never be able to freely elect lawmakers ever again.
Begs the question why does the government feel the need to spend millions more (while they’re supposed to be “cutting back costs”) to inform people of policy?
It’s not like the public get to vote for the government, so that’s not an issue, and 2019-2020 also makes it abundantly clear they don’t give a rat’s arse what the public actually think.
They already have their own TV and radio station and they get ads on all the other free to air channels, so communicating who or what is illegal this week isn’t a problem.
So I must confess, I’m stumped as to what two more overpaid guys with their own overpaid chauffeur will contribute to the government other than a slightly bigger deficit.
“They don’t take our cars. They don’t take our food products.”
So which leader is going to have the balls to tell him ‘because they are crap’?????