Non-senior civil servants expect 4pc pay increase

Some 180,000 junior and middle-rank civil servants expect a salary rise of at least 4 percent as the pay trend survey will be revealed today.

The Executive Council set an across-the-board hike of 2.5 percent last year despite the pay trend review indicating a 2.04 percent rise for junior civil servants, 4.55 percent for middle rankers and 7.26 percent for seniors.

Leung Chau-ting, chief executive of the Hong Kong Federation of Civil Service Unions, said junior and middle-rankers think a salary rise of at least 4 percent is on the cards based on social and economic indicators after normalcy resumed in the wake of the pandemic and many private organizations retaining staff through large raises.

Four percent is "already considered low as salary increases in private organizations must be more than that," Leung said. He also said the government should give civil servants a higher pay rise than last year as the economy has started to pick up.

The president of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, Stanley Ng Chau-pei, also a member of the Executive Council, said it makes sense for employees to expect a reasonable rise in pay as the government has said the economic situation in the first two quarters looked satisfactory.

Ng said last year's pay increases for civil servants fell short of expectations and he will be voicing support for them in the Executive Council.

But another executive councillor, Jeffrey Lam Kin-fung, who is also a commercial sector lawmaker, said businesses in various sectors have only just started to recover and there is a long way to go for the economy.

A senior civil servant said the government should follow the pay trend survey to reduce controversy, but another insider noted about a third of civil service pay adjustments differed considerably from the survey in the past three decades.

sophie.hui@singtaonewscorp.com