The Leisure & Cultural Services Department may review the salaries of temporary contract lifeguards if they feel their pay does not fully reflect their job responsibilities.

Acting Director of Leisure & Cultural Services Alan Siu pledged the department will conduct the review quickly with a view to determining salaries for next year's recruitment.

"In the course of this review, we will take into account the raising of lifeguards' qualification requirements last year and the working conditions of lifeguards in public swimming pools and beaches," he said.

Meeting lifeguard union members today, Mr Siu called on them to respect employment contracts already signed, which run to the end of this swimming season, and accept that the stated salary should not be adjusted.

He suggested that management and lifeguard representatives could hold fact-finding trips to see how guard manpower was deployed at overseas aquatic venues.

He urged the union to act as a bridge between management and staff and convey management's explanations and proposals to the lifeguards so both sides can continue working together to resolve the situation and upkeep swimmer safety.

Rescue figures not concealed

The department said earlier it has not artificially diminished rescue figures to justify reductions in lifeguard posts, adding that incident figures in its swimming pools and on its beaches have no bearing on the number of posts.

The number of functional lifeguard posts at pools is determined by factors like the design, depth and purpose of the pools concerned.

The manpower requirement for temporary lifeguards at a particular pool is calculated on the basis of the highest attendance recorded at any one time in previous years at that pool.

In response to union allegations that it has been concealing the true number of life-saving actions, the department said it keeps figures in different categories of incidents, like rescue cases, fatal cases, give-a-hand cases and accident cases.

It said it is not unusual among government and professional life-saving bodies worldwide to publish figures of drowning cases only in reports concerning water safety.