Legislator Says Officials 'want To Hide Mistake'

Civic Party lawmaker Kwok Ka-ki says he believes the Registration and Electoral Office is trying to cover up its mistake, after a register containing the personal data of 8,000 voters went missing.

While the register - from a polling station in Kwai Tsing district in the New Territories West constituency - is from the 2016 Legco election, the matter was only reported to the Privacy Commissioner on Thursday night.

Kwok, who represents the New Territories West constituency, said: "I'm quite disappointed that the electoral department takes this incident so lightly, and they don't even want to report it to the relevant departments. I think it's entirely unacceptable.

"There's a very logical deduction that they want to cover up the whole incident, so that if no news is brought up, people will just neglect this incident.

"I think this is something which deserves the highest possible standard of investigation and whoever is responsible for the incident should be subject to disciplinary action. And this should be done as soon as possible."

Kwok added that the government should overhaul the overall security system for handling and storing election data before the upcoming District Council elections in November.

Meanwhile the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau says it's very concerned about the incident. It says it has ordered the office to complete the checking of documents as soon as possible and give an account of what happened.