New ‘Public Security Forces status’ bill in 2017

The Secretary for Security, Wong Sio Chak said yesterday on the sidelines of the PJ event that the new “Public Security Forces status” bill would enter the legislative procedure at the beginning of the next year following a three month period of consultation and opinion collection among the members of the security forces.
“Due to the extreme complexity of the amendments to the proposal, we need to clarify and gather opinions from all involved first,” the secretary said adding that in order to expedite the process of reviewing the bill proposal “the opinions collected will be analyzed at the same time that they will be collected in an ongoing process.”
“The proposal will improve the career promotion scheme, allowing the front line staff to have opportunities for career promotion, which will encourage their work. After the change on the law, the lower categories that didn’t have the chance for promotions before will have the chance too,” he said.
On a different topic, being questioned about the new CCTV system which will be implemented in the territory, the secretary informed: “At the moment we have completed the first phase.” This claim was verified by the Commissioner-General of the Unitary Police Service, Ma Io Kun, who said that the government is “working together with the Office for Personal Data Protection since that the activity of each camera must be informed to this Office” prior to the commencement of the 219 cameras’ operation across various points of the territory.
According to Ma, the operation is expected to start around June next year, guaranteeing that “everything will be done according to the law,” and that the same law states “all recordings must be deleted after 60 days except in the cases where the recordings are related with a case [relating to the serving of] justice.”