Advertisement
Hong Kong economy
OpinionLetters

Letters | In lean times, Hong Kong must take on civil service salary reform

Readers discuss aligning civil service pay with the modern job market, Hong Kong’s place on the global stage, and misguided escalator habits

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
1
People walk outside the government offices in Tamar, Hong Kong, during lunch time in December last year. The Hong Kong civil service needs a more sustainable approach towards role-based, data-driven salary benchmarking, Photo: Sun Yeung
Letters
Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form. Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification
At a time when Hong Kong is grappling with a persistent fiscal deficit and an uncertain economic outlook, it is more critical than ever to re-evaluate one of the government’s largest recurring expenditures: civil service salaries.
The current civil service pay structure still rooted in the decades-old framework of upper, middle and lower salary bands is outdated, inflexible and misaligned with the realities of the modern job market. This system, largely unchanged since colonial times, fails to differentiate meaningfully between roles that have vastly different market values, skill requirements and performance outcomes.

Take the example of government land surveyors. Without any promotion, a land surveyor can earn more than HK$100,000 (US$12,800) per month, excluding housing allowance and other benefits. This is double what equivalent professionals earn in the private sector. While civil servants should be fairly compensated, the current model over-rewards tenure rather than performance or market demand and lacks any profession-specific review mechanism.

This issue is not new, and the system is long overdue for reform. It becomes especially untenable now, as the government faces persistent deficits and has proposed cutting 10,000 civil service positions to contain spending. Simply trimming headcount without reforming the outdated salary structure is treating the symptom, not the cause.

A more sustainable approach would involve moving towards role-based, data-driven salary benchmarking, where each professional hire, especially in the technical and professional grades, is regularly reviewed against private-sector standards. Blanket pay bands and automatic annual increments are relics of another era and should be reconsidered in light of both fairness and fiscal responsibility.

Advertisement
Select Voice
Choose your listening speed
Get through articles 2-3x faster
1.1x
220 WPM
Slow
Normal
Fast
1.1x