The government on Thursday revealed that civil servants and unions have welcomed its move to offer more family-friendly measures, with officials expressing the hope that the rest of society would follow suit.

It comes after Chief Executive John Lee proposed in his Policy Address last week that civil servants with children under three can get three days of childcare leave annually starting next April.

On an RTHK radio programme on Thursday, the Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung was asked if the government is taking the lead by rolling out more family-friendly measures, to which she responded: “We hope the whole society can offer more childcare measures to help parents.”

She added that the reaction to the new measure has been "really good". "The unions and other civil servant colleagues have welcomed the measure and are looking forward to it."

Speaking to reporters after the show, she said the government will monitor the measure – expected to benefit some 12,000 employees – after it takes effect.

"We will review how this works out and see if there is room for improvement, or whether it really affects our work seriously.”

The minister also pointed out that a number of factors have led to a 10-percent vacancy rate in the civil service, and that the government needs more time to deal with the manpower crunch.

"In the past few years, we've seen a high retirement wave. It's simply because of the age of civil servants. And also, the number of graduates is not as many as a decade ago. So we have to really compete for talents,” Yeung said.