Being A Catholic and A Senior Civil Servant Any Role Conflict?
Ho Wing Him
21 May 2006, St. Vincent’s Parish, Hong Kong
I am very pleased to have been invited to take part in today’s sharing.
Although I am not an expert in Christian Social Teaching, we are very fortunate to
have two speakers today who are Academics and who have chosen to deal with the
theoretical aspects of today’s subject. It should therefore be acceptable for me to focus
my talk on sharing with you my first hand experience as a senior civil servant while
being a Catholic. Whether there is any role conflict over the years, and if so, how I
dealt with it.
The organizer raised a few related questions – whether a civil servant can
take part in activities of the civil society since as a Catholic he should be motivated to
do so. Since a civil servant has to remain politically neutral, will he be inhibited from
taking an active part in social events? The answers to these questions are quite
straightforward. And they are negative, I am afraid. It is a requirement of senior civil
servants to stay politically neutral and stay out of political activities. Otherwise, his
career as a senior civil servant would be terminated. There is no ground for
negotiation in so far as the civil service regulations are concerned.
The key point I would choose to address today is whether a practicing
Catholic would find himself defying his conscience when he carries out his duties as a
senior civil servant. In this connection, let me quote from Mathews, in which Jesus
was reported to have said “……I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave
me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you
clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me…….The
King will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of
these members of my family, you did it for me!’”
This is one of the quotations from the bible I always remember whenever I
discharged my responsibilities as a civil servant. From the topic of today’s sharing, it
seems to be implied that Government is evil. Otherwise the worry about role conflict
would not have arisen. Let’s put matters in perspective.
The whole rationale for the existence of Government in a modern state is to
do good; to do good for the community that it is governing. For those who have
studied public finance, the typical example always quoted to justify the existence of
Government as an institution is the need for beacons. It serves ships sailing round a
cape, but no private business will operate one because it is impossible to collect a fee
from the users. Similar considerations apply to the police and fire services. Hence
there is need for Government not only to exist, but also to collect tax and decide how
to make use of it.
Because of its unique nature, Government possesses powers that are
normally not enjoyed by private sector enterprises. In this connection, a senior civil
servant enjoys powers that CEOs in a private sector organization never possess. He
has the power to allocate public resources to serve different sectors of the community.
He has a chance to shape public policies that will impact on the well being of different
sectors of society. He takes part in discussions to determine the political decisions that
will affect how public resources will be allocated. That is, he will have an influence
on Government policy, decision and actions that will eventually affect everyone in the
community. If a Catholic wishes to put in practice the message in Mathew’s Gospel
quoted above, is there a better career to achieve the purpose?
When I joined the civil service as a young man, I was not yet a Catholic. But
it was the same motivation that I chose to become a civil servant. I was fortunate
enough to have studied at the University of Berkeley, in its Urban Planning School.
As America’s top Planning School then, it excelled in its study of the political impacts
of planning decisions. Advocacy planning was very much the “in” thing then in
America for those who wish to devote his professional career to help the poor.
If you think carefully about what we are doing with West Kowloon and Kai
Tak, you will understand why planning decisions are political decisions. We plan to
build cultural facilities and expensive housing blocks in West Kowloon, and sports
stadia and five star hotels in the former Kai Tak airport, while the low income families
will continue to live in the slum settlements in Tai Kok Tsui and East Kowloon. I
would have thought that a Government with a social conscience will see the two areas
as providing unique opportunities to rehouse people to be displaced from the
redevelopment of the slum settlements in the older parts of Kowloon.
The concept of advocacy planning is to look at planning issues from the
perspective of the under-privileged, help to articulate their interest and put pressure on
the Government to take into account the interest of the under-class in finalizing the
town plan for implementation. In Berkeley, they considered this approach too reactive.
A better approach, it was argued, is to join the Government so that you can start
exerting your influence from step one of the planning processes. The question is how
long will you last if that is your objective of working in the Government.
I must admit that the Lord has been very kind to me as a civil servant. I had
had plenty of opportunities to do good for the community throughout the career. A lot
of things I did either helped to promote the interest of the entire community or on
occasions, helped to serve those in need. Let me quote a few examples.
As a very junior Assistant Secretary working in the Government Secretariat
in the late 1970s, I found myself caught in the middle of an argument between two
departments on whether Hong Kong should build additional container terminals.
Without any knowledge in container port, I did the necessary research, visit to the
terminals and held discussion with the relevant parties. I came to my own
recommendation and obtained permission to set up a high level committee to resolve
the matter. I made myself the secretary to the committee and the Policy Secretary,
head of the bureau, the chairman of the committee. It was the most rewarding
experience that the outcome of deliberations of the committee was identical to my
recommendations. It was the easiest set of minutes of meeting to write. As we all
know now, Hong Kong continued to build container terminals throughout the 1980s
and 1990s and remained the world’s busiest container port until last year. In this
incident, I did a useful analysis that contributes to Hong Kong’s economic well being
for many years to come.
Another example I wish to quote in some detail is a lunch I hosted in
London for the Archbishop of York of the Church of England before he embarked on
a fact-finding visit to Hong Kong to learn more about the then problem of Vietnamese
boat people in Hong Kong. It was then the late 1980s, more than a decade after the
Americans have withdrawn from Vietnam. Hong Kong then was the only place that
continued to receive Vietnamese boat people as a port of first call. As the situation got
out of hand, we were considering changing the policy. From our intelligence, it was
clear those who were escaping from Vietnam were not political refugees. They were
seeking a better life because the Vietnamese economy then was I a shamble.
Quoting figures from the United Nations, I told the Archbishop that for every
Vietnamese who arrived in Hong Kong by boat, seven died on their way, swallowed
up by the usually choppy South China Sea. The answer was, we argued, for the west
to get over the historical hatred and provide economic assistance to Vietnam to help it
rebuild its economy. The Archbishop was stunned. After his visit to Hong Kong, the
Church of England issued a statement in support of Hong Kong and urged western
countries to help Vietnam rebuild its economy.
There are indeed plenty of opportunities for a senior civil servant to do good
for the community, and for the under-privileged in his official capacity. Another
example to quote without going into detail is my work as Deputy Secretary for Health
and Welfare. I re-engineered Hong Kong’s elderly care services for the benefit of our
older citizens and their families.
I said all the above with one purpose in mind – to encourage young
Catholics to join the civil service if they wish to do good for Hong Kong. But my
sharing would not be complete if I simply paint a rosy picture.
To complete the picture, there were moments where things did not go so
smoothly. I still remember the first instance where I disagreed with what I was
supposed to do. The Government was then considering building a government office
block out of Southorn Playground in Wanchai. For those who know Wanchai back in
the 1970s, Southorn Playground was a very valuable piece of open space. It drew out
large crowds of people every summer evening as people tried to escape from the
summer heat trapped in their tiny cubicle. I told my superior officer that I disagreed
with the proposal. He told me he understood my position, but he had to do it anyway
because he did not have a ready alternative. He did not involve me in the project, and
he did not hold it against me. I did not know then that I was extremely lucky and he
was an extremely reasonable boss.
In subsequent years, I was not as lucky as most bosses were not so
reasonable and accommodating. One policy that I found unacceptable is the
contracting out of the management and cleansing of public facilities. The purpose is to
save money and sure it does. But let me show you how the savings is achieved. The
cost was higher when it was done in-house in a Government Department because
junior civil servants doing such jobs are paid a decent salary of about $10,000 a
month. As most of them would be living in public housing, they could lead a decent
life and raise a family. When the cleansing work is contracted out, the Government
probably saved 30% of the cost. But how is it achieved? The amount of money
payable to the contractor (70% of the original amount when it was done in-house) is
further split into two portions – partly being the salary of the front line staff, with the
remaining being the profit of the company and the cost of managing the contract. The
end result is that the people who actually carry out the cleansing work earn a monthly
salary of only $4000 a month. This policy of contracting out therefore unintentionally
aggravates the problem of a growing wealth gap between the rich and the poor. When
I first tried to articulate this view within the Government, some colleagues saw me as
a troublemaker, I am sad to say.
I do not want to bother you with too many details. But let me conclude by
saying that as a senior civil servant you should have plenty of opportunities to do
good for the under-privileged. From this point of view, your biggest obstacles will be
those colleagues who joint the civil service because it is a good job that pays well.
Many of these people will not be bothered if a slightly adjusted policy will do good
for the under-privileged. If there are more Catholics working in the civil service, it
should be a more caring civil service.