Sonia Chan (center)
A letter by the late Commission Against Corruption investigator’s wife was brought into the legislature’s debate yesterday afternoon by lawmaker José Pereira Coutinho, shining the spotlight on the alleged pressure plaguing civil servants.
As lawmakers debated with the Secretary for Administration and Justice Sonia Chan in the Legislative Assembly over her 2016 action plan for the second and final day, multiple lawmakers inquired whether the senior official would introduce initiatives to improve civil servants’ morale, which has allegedly hit a record low.
Coutinho, also president of the Macau Civil Servants Association, claimed that “many officials rushed to retire” due to “lack of welfare support.”
He lashed out at the government for failing to implement a mechanism to penalize senior officials for malpractice.
“Usually frontline staff are the only ones to be held accountable, like the pair in the public hospital document leakage earlier. They were fired off more quickly than the racing carts,” he stated, indicating that less qualified staff bore the brunt for errors most of the time.
Coutinho highlighted the recent case of a CCAC worker’s suicide (see text below), declaring that he was unconvinced by the authorities’ findings and demanding an independent inquiry into the abrupt death, before which the 43-year-old investigator enjoyed a family holiday in Australia.
“Could the truth come to light only after a recognizable task force looks into the incident?” asked the lawmaker when he met journalists on the sidelines of the debate.
A month has passed with no updates from the authorities, except when the anti-corruption agency’s head André Cheong downplayed the death two days after the incident, on the sidelines of a function.
The lawmaker generalized it as the government’s usual style in response to sensitive issues. He also stressed that it was not their place to “interfere with how the agency coped with cases” and a “lucid procedure of inquiry would give confidence to the public.”
The lawmaker also urged for CCAC’s continued presence in the legislative assembly, in order to keep lawmakers better informed of its anti-corruption efforts.
“Instead of investigation and individual cases, they could let us know their working situation, what support they need and the complex issues they have encountered,” he said.
Among the 33 lawmakers who received copies of the letter from the legislature’s head earlier, Coutinho was the only one to raise the demand in the debate. Given the limited attention on the incident, he believed it would be impossible to force a hearing on the matter in the legislature.
civil servants regime review continues
The administrative authorities will continue to review the system next year that decides civil servants’ promotion requisites and salary, in order to explore the extent of possible adjustment to the regime, said the secretary in response to low morale among civil servants. She also promised to address civil servants’ overtime for better work-life balance.
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