The head of a civil service union on Monday welcomed the administration's plan to facilitate dental services in Greater Bay Area cities so government workers can get faster treatment.

This came after the Secretary for the Civil Service, Ingrid Yeung, floated the idea last week, noting a lack of dentists in public clinics in the SAR, while acknowledging authorities need to offer more benefits to retain staff.

Speaking on an RTHK programme, Li Kwai-yin, president of the Hong Kong Chinese Civil Servants’ Association, said she welcomed the government’s plan, but noted officials should move fast to ramp up dental services as the dentist manpower crunch was rather “severe”.

"For example, regarding the dental cleaning service, in the past we had it about once every 12 to 18 months, but now it takes 40 months to receive the next appointment notice to do dental cleaning, and the waiting time for dental treatment services is even longer - it's taking years to receive treatments.”

“For some newly joined civil servants, they didn't even get a chance to do a dental check after waiting for three to four years,” she told RTHK.

Li also noted that Grade 3A general hospitals in Shenzhen, or the University of Hong Kong–Shenzhen Hospital, could be prioritised to save on travelling time under the plan, and that the scope of the treatments could not only cover dental cleaning, but also other simple treatments, such as tooth filling and tooth extraction procedures.

Private institutions with quality services could be considered as well, Li added.

She also hopes authorities could further study the feasibility of sharing medical and health records between hospitals in the SAR and the mainland to ease the city's tight dental care services.

The government last July rolled out a pilot scheme on dental scaling for eligible civil servants to reduce the burden on public healthcare.

Speaking on a TV programme on Sunday, civil service minister Yeung said there were some technical difficulties with tracking health records and determining the scope of treatments that could be done outside Hong Kong, but noted that authorities need to provide more benefits to maintain the competitiveness of civil service jobs in the face of a broader manpower shortage issue.