February 26, 2008
Dear the Hon Cheung Man-kwong,
I am writing to complain about your discriminatory comment on February 20 against non-degree holders who wish to apply for the position of Director of Broadcasting and to urge you to retract the remarks.
As an ordinary citizen, I can agree no more with Mr. Robert Chow Yung, B.B.S., that blatant discrimination on the grounds of academic qualification is serious in Hong Kong and the importance of work experience is often underweighted in employment situations. Taking the case on hand of headhunting for the Director of Broadcasting as an example, all 20 applicants in the first round of the recruitment exercise, who met the requirement of holding university degrees, were found by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, i.e. the biggest employer in the territory, as unsuitable for the post. This judgment seems to have been made regardless of candidates’ professional background, as one of the publicly known applicants, Mr. Tai Kin-man was ousted even he, being the present Assistant Director of Broadcasting and having worked at RTHK since 1982, must be the candidate with the closest working experience to that of the Director of Broadcasting, if not necessarily the most experienced one in the public broadcaster’s work among the contenders. It is reasonable to believe there must be at least some other veteran media workers among the 20 applicants too, since the requirements for the post are not low. To lay members of the public like me, it is difficult to find what all the first-round candidates have together done wrong to make them commonly unqualified, except that they have all studied at universities.
The government's discrimination against degree holders in this incident is intolerable. But on the other hand it is a good chance for Hong Kong, of which the government always boasts it as a "knowledge-based economy", to rethink what academic qualifications mean. Mr Cheung yourself, as the lawmaker representing the education sector, have raised doubt on the quality of qualifications. It was revealed by Secretary for Education Michael Suen Ming-yeung upon your request on the Legislative Council meeting on October 31, 2007 that more than 600 students admitted to associate degree programmes in the past four years had not met the standard requirements, i.e. passes in an A-Level subject and the English and Chinese languages. Yet Mr Suen defended that the phenomenon did not amount to an abuse of the admission system. The figure plus the education chief's position are convincing enough for the government to distrust academic credentials while hiring. How can the government's recruitment, especially of such an important person as the Director of Public Broadcasting whose decisions made at RTHK will be seen to mark Hong Kong’s freedom of speech and freedom of press, rely on such a peripheral criterion of a piece of paper showing one has been at university?
Hong Kong is a free and open society in which everyone should enjoy the opportunity to succeed with their merits and efforts. The story of our Chief Executive Sir Donald Tsang Yam-kuen has demonstrated the Hong Kong way of success. Sir Donald, then Chief Secretary for Administration holding a Master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard University and honorary doctorates from the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, happily accepted the job as the Big Team Captain of Cleaning as assigned by his boss Mr Tung Chee-hwa in 2003. With his "I'll get this job done" spirit, Sir Donald had all streets in the city cleaned, and later took up the top job as the Chief Executive. If Sir Donald had been ousted from the colonial government's executive officer recruitment process because he then did not have a university degree, we would not see him leading the Special Administrative Region with strong governance now.
As Mr Chow, B.B.S. pointed out, academic qualification discrimination should by no means be accepted in such an advanced city as Hong Kong. I would like to take this opportunity to suggest to you and other legislators that the Special Administrative Region should legislate against academic qualification discrimination. This can not only enhance equal opportunities in employment and other situations, but will also improve Hong Kong's international reputation with regards to human rights. A pioneering law to combat this kind of discrimination, which has been overlooked by the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and other international agreements, will certainly make Western critics forget Hong Kong still does not have universal suffrage or a law against racial discrimination. This will hopefully help the city maintain high scores in investment environment ratings, thus attracting global entrepreneurs to conduct businesses here.
Back to your comments on March 20, perhaps now I should thank you instead of asking you to retract them because - according to Mr Chow, B. B. S., had you not made them, he would not have applied for the position of Director of Broadcasting, and the people of Hong Kong would therefore never learn the new concept of academic qualification discrimination.
Yours sincerely,
Little Reporter
A Hong Kong citizen and a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Hong Kong
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