The Government will closely monitor the implementation of a new policy giving civil servants who are parents three days of childcare leave per year and review it if necessary, Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung said today.

Ms Yeung made the remarks at a media session after she appeared on a radio programme to talk about initiatives related to the civil service in last week’s Policy Address.

“We will review how this works out and see if there is room for improvement or whether it really affects our work seriously,” she said. “We cannot tell at the present moment as it is a new measure but we will review this after it has (been) implemented for some time.”

Asked about the issue of civil service manpower, Ms Yeung said the Government is proceeding at full steam in its recruitment efforts but added that it must be careful in its deployment of manpower.

“One of our measures, in fact this year in the Policy Address, is to see if technological solutions can be introduced to make better use of existing manpower, whether processes can be streamlined, whether priorities can be changed to make better use of existing manpower.”