More than 10,000 posts in the Hong Kong government will be cut by the end of Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s current term in June 2027, with close to 60 per cent of these deletions being junior roles and about 3 per cent at the senior level.
Civil service minister Ingrid Yeung Ho Poi-yan said on Monday the move was not “fattening the top but thinning the bottom” and was reasonable because the civil service had far more frontline staff.
Yeung was briefing legislators on her bureau’s budget spending in 2026-27 at a session of Monday’s special Finance Committee meeting.
“The reduction in establishment is the most direct way to cut actual expenditure as the financial provisions for personal emoluments allocated to bureaus and departments are calculated based on the number of posts rather than headcounts,” she said.
“With the reduction in establishment, the provisions allocated to them will be directly reduced.”
Yeung said a cumulative reduction of more than 10,000 posts was expected within this term of government, noting that the overall civil service had already been trimmed to 188,000.
