A recentterritory-wide survey conducted by the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups found that theproposals to overhaul the civil service did not shake young people's desire to join it.More than half of the respondents said that they would still consider joining the civilservice even the proposals were put into effect. Respondents of a younger age were moredesirous than their older counterparts in this regard.

    Eighty per cent of the respondentssupported the Government's move to overhaul the civil service. Among the various mostimportant proposals, the suggestion that promotion should be on a competition basis ratherthan on a seniority basis secured the greatest support from respondents, with 93 pre centof the respondents showed support to this suggestion. The second and third suggestionswell received by youngsters were the linkage of pay with performance, and thesimplification of the process of redeployment and redundancy.

    However, youngsters seemed not satisfiedwith the performance of the civil servants. Young people, on average, gave 5.9 points tothe performance of the civil servants on a 0-10 scale- point.

    The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groupsconducted this telephone survey from 9 to 10 March 1999, the following two days after theconsultation document entitled Civil Service into the 21^st Century wasdelivered. A total of 319 young people, aged 18 to 34, were successfully interviewed. Thesurvey found that civil service had a wide appeal for youngpeople, with more than half of the respondents revealing that they hadthought of joining the civil service before, particularly among respondents of a youngerage.

    More than 80 per cent of respondents hadpaid attention to the consultation document.

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