Chief Executive John Lee today announced that two teams of civil servants were awarded the Chief Executive’s Award for Exemplary Performance.
They were the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Search & Rescue Team to quake-stricken areas in Myanmar in March 2025 and the Inter-departmental Preparation Team for Kai Tak Sports Park (KTSP) Commissioning respectively.
Mr Lee congratulated the two teams and expressed pride in their performance and contributions.
“The two award-winning teams reflected the outstanding competence of the civil service of the Hong Kong SAR and the efficiency of the Government, and exemplified Hong Kong’s second-place global ranking in the ‘Government efficiency’ factor of the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2025. All these have confirmed and reinforced my belief in driving result-oriented policies for the Government,” he said.
Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung said the Hong Kong SAR Search & Rescue Team demonstrated fearless professionalism and humanitarian care, while the Preparation Team for KTSP Commissioning displayed efficient collaboration and precise planning of the civil servants.
In March this year, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar, resulting in serious casualties. The Hong Kong SAR Government quickly formed an interdepartmental search and rescue team.
Civil servants from the Security Bureau, the Fire Services Department and the Immigration Department, together with medical representatives from the Hospital Authority, rushed to Mantalay, one of the most devastated areas in Myanmar, to conduct search and rescue operations.
With professional training, fearlessness and perseverance, the team completed 61 search and rescue operations covering 57 locations amid the constant aftershocks and scorching heat in the disaster-stricken areas, the Civil Service Bureau (CSB) said.
The team also conducted joint operations with the China Search & Rescue Team and successfully rescued one survivor who had been trapped for more than 125 hours.
Meanwhile, the Inter-departmental Preparation Team for KTSP Commissioning comprised civil servants from the Culture, Sports & Tourism Bureau, the Security Bureau, the CSB, the Transport & Logistics Bureau, Police and the Transport Department.
In the face of multiple challenges such as the pressing schedule, the large scale of the project and complicated co-ordination work, the preparation team, with its innovative thinking, meticulous planning and interdepartmental collaborations, completed around 20 test events, including five large-scale drills, in just five months, mobilising 140,000 civil servants to participate in the stress tests to evaluate the capability of the KTSP and its surrounding facilities comprehensively.
Through continuous stress tests and optimisation of detailed arrangements, thorough preparation was made for the commissioning of the KTSP, the CSB added.
