Dear Colleagues,

Administration of Leave-taking and Leave Accumulation
in the Civil Service

I am writing to explain the Administration's present thinking on leave-taking and leave accumulation in the civil service.

The intention behind the leave policy for the civil service is that individual officers will take leave from time to time to recuperate from the pressure of work, for betterment of health and in the case of officers on overseas terms, for the renewal of home and family ties.

All along, Civil Service Bureau encourages management and staff to draw up leave plans in advance, taking account of operational requirements and the need to avoid staff maintaining large leave balances.  However, except for certain officers who are required under their terms of appointment to exhaust within a specified leave cycle the leave earned within that cycle, there is at present no general requirement on other officers to clear their accumulated leave balance periodically.  Some officers have also encountered difficulty in obtaining approval to take leave due to genuine operational needs.  As a result, many civil servants have accumulated a fairly large balance of untaken leave.  The substantial liability that the Government has thus incurred in respect of  untaken leave has given rise to public concern.  It is necessary for the Government to address the situation.

As a first step, we have drawn up some preliminary proposals to improve the administration of leave-taking and leave accumulation in the civil service, and sought the views of departmental/grade management on their feasibility and related implementational issues.  In this context, we have mentioned 1 October 2004 as a tentative implementation date for illustration of how the proposed measures will operate (e.g. how the leave cycle will be counted).

Our consultation with departmental/grade management has recently ended.  We have received diverse views from departmental and grade management over the introduction of uniform requirements on leave management across different bureaux/departments and different grades and ranks.  We are now studying the feedback in detail, with particular regard to the differences in workload and operational considerations among various bureaux/departments and various grades/ranks.  It is likely that substantial changes will have to be made to our preliminary proposals to take account of operational and management considerations at the departmental level.  We shall consult staff fully on any specific proposals in this regard in due course.  Allowing time for our internal examination of the consultation feedback from departmental/grade management and the need for staff consultation, it is unlikely that any new measures, if proposed, will be implemented within this year.

I shall write to you again after we have examined the views received from the departmental/grade management.  In the meantime, I look to departmental and grade management to plan and monitor the leave plans of their staff closely to ensure that their staff take leave on a regular basis on the one hand and avoid any unwarranted accumulation of leave balances on the other.

Yours sincerely,

(Joseph W P Wong)
Secretary for the Civil Service