Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for the Civil Service, Mrs Ingrid Yeung, on "government-wide mobilisation" at a media session after attending a radio programme this morning (September 9):
Reporter: Secretary, can you tell us how many more people or what is your estimate in terms of the number of people being deployed this time compared to when Typhoon Saola hit Hong Kong? Where would these people go to in terms of districts? You also said that the planning of the "government-wide mobilisation" protocol started yesterday, could the mechanism be kicked start even earlier?
Secretary for the Civil Service: I would like to say that first of all, all our emergency departments, departments responsible for emergencies, rescue and responsible for dealing with emergency situations, most of them are our works departments which are responsible for dealing with landslides, flooding and so on, they have been all out. They have deployed all their staff to deal with the rainstorm in the past two days.
For other work that can only be done when the roads have been reopened, when the flooding has been subsided, we are now mobilising civil servants from other departments that do not have to deal with these emergencies to help with the work. I think the main work will be to help with people who have been affected by the flooding to restore their home situation in more remote areas, to restore the road situation, and so on. The more local roads, not the main ones. Our civil servants will be deployed to those work. They will be under the charge of the Home Affairs Department and the respective District Offices. The actual number deployed will depend on the situation on the ground and I think they are planning for it, they have already started the work. In the end, the final number can only be decided as the day goes on, when they have an estimate of how much work needs to be done. That's the situation.
As for whether the mobilisation can be done earlier, we have to understand that, when the rainstorm is at its height, it will mainly be the emergency departments and the departments dealing with repair of roads, removal of obstructions that are working. In such situations, when the roads are blocked, when the flooding has still not been subsided, it would not be possible to mobilise civil servants to go to these very local areas to help. We have to wait until, when I say wait – it's really not waiting for a long time, but we have to let the emergency departments to deal with these emergency situations first, and then we mobilise our staff to go under relatively safe conditions to help the families affected and the residents affected.
Before the Black Rainstorm Warning Signal was down, we have already asked the departments which would likely be mobilised to pay attention to our notices, and so they have in turn asked their staff who are on the first shift to pay attention to their smart phones and the notification system. So all staff are geared up and ready as soon as they are notified. They would be able to come out to do the work. Actually we've notified the departments yesterday that they are very likely to be required to work today. So, this morning, I think our civil servants are very ready to come out and respond to calls.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
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