Incumbent civil servants will face expulsion from office if they do not formally declare loyalty to the Hong Kong government as required, according to a meeting between a top official and staff unions.

It is also understood that the government will issue circulars to all 180,000 sitting civil servants as early as the end of this month or the beginning of next year, setting out the content and implementation details of the necessary oath and declaration form to be foisted on employees.

Contract staff, who are not part of the civil service, will not be spared either, with a similar profession of allegiance required of them in the next stage of the government exercise.

The stringent conditions and implementation details were said to have been revealed in talks between Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip and eight civil service unions on Thursday.

Earlier, new recruits employed from July 1 were obliged to pledge to uphold Hong Kong’s mini-constitution the Basic Law, bear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, be dedicated to their duties and be responsible to the HKSAR government. It will soon be the turn of the rest of the civil service to follow suit.

The unions in attendance at Thursday’s meeting were the Central Staff Consultative Council comprising the Model Scale 1 Staff Consultative Council, the Senior Civil Service Council, the Police Force Council and the Disciplined Services Consultative Council, as well as the Hong Kong Civil Servants General Union, the Hong Kong Federation of Civil Service Unions, the Government Employees Association and the Government Disciplined Services General Union.

It is believed that Nip’s Civil Service Bureau will send a preview of the declaration document to the Central Staff Consultative Council for consultation next week at the soonest, to explain the reasons and responsibilities involved in the undertaking.

Departmental heads and permanent secretaries will have to swear an oath, while civil servants of other ranks must return their signed declaration forms to the department heads within a month after issuance.

Those who do not comply will, in the absence of a reasonable explanation, be seen as infringing the Public Services (Administration) Order and be required to resign without the option of early retirement.

After employees have committed themselves via the oath or the declaration, the bureau will send any subsequent breaches considered to have broken the law to enforcement agencies in charge of national security, while breaches of regulations will be handled according to the current disciplinary mechanism of the civil service.

Unionist Leung Chau-ting said after the meeting with Nip that staffers who had yet to fulfil the allegiance demand would not be promoted and their application for a delayed retirement would be suspended. If the staffers concerned eventually declined to comply, they would be asked to leave the government, he said, citing the minister.

Incumbent civil servants were bound by the Civil Service Code and the Basic Law, said Leung, chair of the Federation of Civil Service Unions.

He challenged the government’s linking of the oath and the declaration with national security laws, saying: “It is not a matter of choice, it’s a matter of having no choice.”

Many civil servants had expressed worries about being incriminated by what they said, Leung added, and urged the government to set out clear guidelines on violations of the declaration or the oath.

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