The Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) released on Friday a new report highlighting several unlawful hiring practices at the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC).
The report was issued just weeks after a leadership change at the IC, in which former president Ung Vai Meng quit unexpectedly and was replaced by Leung Hio Ming, one of the bureau’s former vice presidents.
Leung already stated that he was aware of the CCAC investigation, but that the contested procedures were not under his supervision.
The document, named “Investigation report on the employment of workers through acquisition of services by the Cultural Affairs Bureau”, argues that the IC has “violated the law of open recruitment and central recruitment system [and] evaded the superior’s assessment and supervision by hiring a lot of workers through acquisition of services over recent years.”
The CCAC focuses on issues such as the IC’s reported failure to publicize job openings, as well as carelessness, negligence and an alleged violation of the recusal system.
The anti-graft watchdog claims that during the investigations, which started in April 2016 and lasted for almost a year, it became clear that the IC had been hiring numerous illegal workers through acquisition of services in recent years.
The CCAC said it had identified similar flaws in other public departments and that, together with the Commission of Audit (CA), it had continuously pointed out these practices in their reports, recommendations and guidelines.
Such recommendations were acknowledged by “most of the public departments [that] have avoided hiring workers through acquisition of services,” a situation that did not happen for the IC, which has been using the method increasingly over the years.
According to the CCAC report, there were a total of 112 workers employed by the IC in 2014 using the aforementioned method, accounting for about 17 percent of all of the bureau’s employees. A similar figure was noted in 2015 when 110 workers were hired through the same method.
Last year, although the bureau was already under investigation, the number of employees hired by that method still came to 94 workers.
The CCAC also noted in its report that, according to the information provided by the IC, apart from full-time workers, the bureau also recruited “a considerable number of part-time workers who were paid hourly to work in relevant sub-units every year. A total of 308 such workers were recruited in 2014; 293 and 416 workers were recruited in 2015 and 2016 respectively.”
The CCAC added that the method was broadly used and that there was a complete system in place to supervise these employees’ work differently.
“There were even special forms to record the attendance of such workers and for them to apply for annual leave. Arguably, the practice already became quite common, systematized and standardized,” the CCAC report continued, adding that the IC had always justified the hiring process by citing “heavy workloads”, “inadequate manpower” and the “time-consuming recruitment process.”
During the investigation, the IC said, “the massive increase in the workloads in recent years and the inadequate manpower made them unable to cope with a multitude of additional projects; not to mention that it took too long to hire workers through the central recruitment system and that the authorities would not approve our exemption from initiating an open recruitment process.”
However, the CCAC investigations found that when recruiting workers through acquisition of services, the IC also failed to publicize their recruitment. Nor did they request job seeker information from the Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau (SAFP), resorting instead to internal recruitment that would reach only colleagues and friends, or by word of mouth in specific sectors.
“These acts were against the principle of openness in the recruitment procedures of public servants,” continued the CCAC, adding that the new recruits were often were not required to undergo any written proficiency tests, meaning that their hiring was solely dependent on resume analysis and personal interviews.
In some cases, workers were hired to perform specialized tasks such as “supervision of facility maintenance and engineering work” – which would often be carried out by a candidate without any relevant field training or work experience.
In another example, the CCAC cited a worker that was hired to “assist in handling the personnel salary payments as well as some other accounting-related tasks”, when the candidate’s work experience only mentioned “dormitory management and settlement of dispute in dormitories in a hotel of Macau”, which appeared largely irrelevant from the CCAC’s perspective.
“When the IC recruited workers through acquisition of services, its recruitment procedures were neither open nor transparent,” the CCAC concluded, adding that “the recruitment criteria were neither clear nor regulated.”
Moreover, there were circumstances in which “the relatives of some leaders and chiefs were able to be recruited by the IC through acquisition of services.”
“Such acts were against the civil service recruitment policies of the Macau SAR Government which propose openness, fairness and justice,” said the CCAC.
It described the illegal hiring as having led to many “unexplainable” and “difficult to control” situations, from illegal contract clauses to inexplicable salary adjustments.
IC promises to ‘tackle the issue’
In response to the disclosure of the CCAC report, the IC said in a press statement that it would “immediately tackle the issue”, beginning by analyzing the report together with CCAC’s suggestions and acting in accordance with the law. Such a task would aim to “rectify the inappropriateness mentioned in the report as soon as possible,” the statement said. “In the process of this investigation, the IC has cooperated closely with the CCAC and agrees with the needs for improvement mentioned in the report,” the IC added in the statement, expressing “heartfelt gratitude to CCAC for perceiving the inadequacies.” The Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Alexis Tam has given the IC 30 days to reply to the CCAC.
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