Source suggests department may have been leaned on by civil service unions
PHILA.SIU@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Friday, 15 April, 2016, 8:15am
The Lands Department has been accused of defying government guidelines in its recruitment for about 16 jobs by eliminating candidates from outside of the civil service at an initial stage and only processing entries from people already working in the department.
A source with knowledge of the hiring process for artisans, who patrol squatter huts, said the practice was “hideous” and “unfair”.
The source said it was unclear why the bosses decided to do so, but one possibility was that they had come under pressure from civil service unions to protect their members.
The source believed the management who decided to hire only those already in the department may know each other, leading to suspicions of a conflict of interest.
“It’s unfair. The department can’t eliminate the outside candidates like that because it was a public recruitment exercise.
“The purpose of public recruitment is to find the most suitable candidates,” the source said.
A spokesman for the department did not deny or confirm the accusations.
The spokesman said that, when hiring, “the department follows the normal practice to consider the qualifications and the areas of work in which the applicant has been engaged in [or] exposed to, but not with reference to particular positions he is holding [or] has held.”
The exercise started around October last year, with applications closing in November.
Artisans are paid a salary ranging from HK$14,905 per month to HK$17,995.
Candidates need to have completed an approved apprenticeship or other approved course of training in welding, amongst other requirements.
The source said the department received about 220 applications, with roughly 150 candidates from outside the civil service. The rest were civil servants from the department.
Leung Chau-ting, chief executive of Federation of Civil Service Unions, said that, if the accusations were true, the department was being ‘unfair’. Photo: David Wong
The source said that it was the department’s human resources staff who processed applications in the first round. In that round, more than 20 non-civil service candidates were considered to be qualified.
But when it came to the second round, which is handled by the squatter control section, all those non-civil service candidates were knocked out.
Most of those chosen at that stage held the post of Workman level 1. The recruitment exercise is still ongoing.
The source added that under the guidelines from the Civil Service Bureau, artisans must be hired by open recruitment.
Leung Chau-ting, chief executive of the Federation of Civil Service Unions, said that the department was being “unfair” if the accusations are true.
“If it’s a public recruitment exercise, it is only fair if the department considers candidates who are not civil servants already,” he said.
But he also said the department could have already processed all the applications and found that the civil servant candidates were the most qualified.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1936033/hong-kong-lands-department-accused-unfair
