A Hong Kong social worker who was removed from an industry licensing body after an overhaul aimed at “protecting” national security has filed a complaint to the government watchdog.
In a letter to the Ombudsman on Saturday, Eddie Tse said the Social Workers Registration Board did not explain why he had been axed from the disciplinary committee. He said the letter he received from the board on his removal said only that his appointment to the panel had “lapsed” due to the recent amendments to the Social Workers Registration Ordinance.
The Social Workers Registration Board is in charge of vetting the qualifications of the city’s social workers board. Tse said he had been a member of the board’s disciplinary committee panel, which handles complaints against social workers, since 2020.
In July, Hong Kong’s opposition-free legislature passed a bill giving government appointees a majority on the Social Workers Registration Board. The authorities said the move was needed to “better protect national security.” Ahead of the overhaul, Tse held a short protest outside the government headquarters and conducted a survey with other social work veterans showing that social workers overwhelmingly disapproved of the amendment.
Earlier this month, the government published a new name list for the disciplinary panel. Besides Tse, another social worker Jackie Chen – who was acquitted of rioting in 2019, but is now facing a second trial following a government appeal – was also absent from the list.
In the letter, Tse also questioned a follow-up letter from the board sent last Friday, which said that – since the amended ordinance took effect – the appointment of all members of the previous committee, for the 2023 to 2026 term, had “lapsed,” and therefore the question of removals or additions was not relevant.
Tse said, if that was the case, all members should have received letters that their appointment had “lapsed.”
He added that the government had never published the membership list of the 2023 to 2026 committee despite the ordinance requiring authorities to do so. Previously, the name list for previous terms could be found on the Social Workers Registration Board website.
The Ombudsman confirmed with Tse that it had received his complaint, and would now decide whether to investigate.
HKFP has reached out to the Social Workers Registration Board for comment. The Ombudsman said it could not confirm whether it had received the complaint as it cannot disclose the contents of cases to third parties.
‘Image problems’
Herman Hui, a solicitor who was appointed the chairperson of the new board, said in an interview on iCable last week that the body had removed three to five people from the disciplinary panel due to “image problems.”
“Those with image problems – no matter what [our] doubts are about them – were not added to the list,” Hui said in Cantonese.
Tse told HKFP earlier that, if his removal from the list was indeed due to his protest of the amendment, it showed that the city no longer tolerated people expressing opposing views.
The government’s overhaul of the Social Workers Registration Board in July shook up the composition of the body, increasing the percentage of government-appointed members of the board from 40 per cent to over 60 per cent. In recent years, all members elected by their peers had come from the city’s pro-democracy camp.
The amended bill also bars those convicted of national security offences and “other serious crimes” from being social workers.
Before the bill passed in the Legislative Council, seven out of the eight elected board members quit. The new board was unveiled in July, two days after the bill passed. No election was held to replace the members who resigned, meaning the board now consists almost entirely of government appointees.
