Mok Ian Ian, who headed the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) until Tuesday, became president of the Macau Science Centre (MSC) yesterday, according to a government announcement.
Mok became the bureau’s president in February 2018 with a one-year-term appointment, which was renewed in February 2019 for two more years.
Mok’s appointment as the bureau’s president was renewed in February last year for two more years. Yesterday’s appointment for her new post at Macau Science Centre Limited, a public enterprise, means that her appointment as president of the Macau Cultural Affairs Bureau, which was to end in February next year, came to an end about one year before scheduled.
Irrespective of her past work at the Cultural Affairs Bureau and her new post at the Macau Science Centre, Mok has always continued to hold her post as a senior official of the Macau Government Information Bureau (GCS).
According to an executive order published in the Official Gazette (BO) yesterday, Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng has appointed Mok, a public servant employed by the Government Information Bureau, to work for the Macau Science Centre Limited for an initially one-year-term effective from yesterday. Ho signed the executive order on Friday.
In Macau, public servants who have been seconded from one to another public entity normally keep their status as a public servant employed by their original place of work. This means that if their secondment is not renewed in the future, they will normally return to the place which originally employed them.
Ho’s executive order did not mention what Mok’s new position in the Macau Science Centre is.
However, following yesterday’s publication of Ho’s executive order, the Macau Science Centre announced in a statement Mok’s appointment as its new president effective from yesterday.
According to the statement, Mok’s appointment is to fill the vacancy of the post of president.
Former secretary for transport and public works Lau Si Io retired as president of Macau Science Centre Limited’s board of directors in 2020. Since then, the position had been vacant until Mok’s appointment, which took effect yesterday.
Yesterday’s statement said that due to the vacancy of the position of president and the need to ensure the Macau Science Centre’s sustainable development, a shareholders’ meeting had decided to appoint Mok as the president of Macau Science Centre Limited effective from January 19 this year.
The statement pledged that the Macau Science Centre will, under Mok’s leadership, continue to be dedicated to serving residents and “open a new chapter for its future development”.
The Macau Science Centre in Nape opened in 2010. Macau Science Centre Limited is a public enterprise co-owned by the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) (holding 98 percent of the shares), Macau Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) (holding one percent of the shares) and Macau Productivity and Technology Transfer Centre (CPTTM) (holding one percent of the shares).
Public enterprises, also known as publicly-funded companies, refer to firms in which the MSAR government or any of its entities are holding shares.
Meanwhile, according to a notice published by the office of Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Elsie Ao Ieong U in the Official Gazette yesterday, Mok’s appointment as president of the Cultural Affairs Bureau terminated yesterday when she started to work for the Macau Science Centre Limited.
According to the gazette, Mok joined the public administration in 1994 when she started to work for the Government Information Bureau (GCS). She was appointed as a division chief, on secondment from GCS, at the Cultural Affairs Bureau in 2000.
Mok worked in the local government’s office in Beijing from 2001 to 2011 where her duties included media relations and cultural promotion.
Mok was a member of the Administrative Committee of the government’s then Cultural Industries Fund (FIC) from July 2015 to April 2017, after which she returned to the Government Information Bureau where she had worked as a senior public servant until her appointment as the city’s culture chief in February 2018, according to the gazette.
According to the gazette, Mok holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Jinan University in Guangzhou, as well as a master’s degree and a doctoral degree in Drama Studies from Nanjing University.
The government has described Mok as a “famous” writer.
The Cultural Affairs Bureau, which was set up in 1982, is known for its frequent senior staff changes.
The then president of the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), Mok Ian Ian, speaks to reporters at the Macau Cultural Centre (CCM) in Nape last year. Photo: Prisca Tang
