Former chief executive will be confined to small cell and carry out menial work for HK$23 a week; he is also likely to meet up with his former chief secretary Rafael Hui
Disgraced former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen faces the music on Wednesday morning when a judge hands down his sentence for If he does go to jail, he might well be reunited with his former right-hand man, former chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan. A prison insider told the that Tsang would probably be sent to Stanley – one of the six maximum security prisons housing high-security risk inmates and those requesting protection, like Hui. He will probably also be the first knighted prisoner to serve time in Stanley in the post-handover period. And the man who led the city for seven years and made HK$371,000 a month may find himself earning HK$23 a week doing laundry and making envelopes for the government departments he once headed. Like all other inmates, Tsang will have to wear brown prison garb. Others aspects of prison life might take some getting used to, a source said. “He will be provided with one roll of toilet paper every three weeks like everyone else.” “He will be required to wake up at 6.30am, work and go to bed at 10pm.” If the former chief executive asks for a single cell and special protection, like Hui and other prominent inmates, Tsang’s room will be just 80.7 square feet with a plastic bed, a plastic desk attached to a wall, a plastic chair and a private sink and toilet made of stainless steel. Under prison rules, all prisoners are required to work for not more than 10 hours a day to reduce the risk of unrest due to boredom. But they may be excused from work on medical grounds. Work ranges from making clothes and leather work to making traffic signs, slabs and kerbs for highways and infrastructure projects and doing simple manual work like providing laundry services for the Hospital Authority and doing printing work for government departments. “Given Tsang’s health condition and age, maybe he only has to do easy work like binding books for public libraries and making envelopes,” the insider said. “Each inmate can use his or her earnings from work in the prison to purchase approved items such as tissues or other daily consumable items twice a month.” But he won’t even be making the minimum wage as an inmate only earns HK$23 to HK$192 a week, depending on the type of work, the technical requirements of each position and the work environment. Then security minister Ambrose Lee Siu-kwong told the Legislative Council in 2012: “Given all basic necessities of inmates are provided by the government and prices of approved daily consumable items and snacks are set with reference to inmates’ purchasing power, there is no question of the level of inmates’ earnings being too low to meet their basic living needs.
