0003230
G.F. 323
CONFIDENTIAL
2 -
tasks were proposed.
done now.
This organisation was simply to do what is
The waste of resources contemplated seems to me to be
alarming. The government structure that has developed in Hong
Kong is highly centralised with a functional distribution of executive powers down, in almost all cases, to a quite junior
level with the single exception of the Police Force. Several
attempts have been made to re-shape various parts of the administration
on a geographical basis, particularly by District Commissioners,
New Territories, including myself, but these attempts have for good
reasons had only very limited success. As staff organisations have
grown administration has become more complex and specialisation more
necessary. when, for instance, it was decided that a second Chief Engineer should be appointed to handle the increasing volume of road works in the urban areas we found a Chief Engineer (Traffic Engineering) and a Chief Engineer (Road Works) not a Chief Engineer (Hong Kong Roads) and a Chief Engineer (Kowloon Roads). This
pattern of development has prevailed not out of perversity but for
sound reasons arising from the complexity of the work and the
compactness of the Colony. Many big cities elsewhere look with
envy on our system of administration and compare it favourably with
the maze of local authorities that history has left them with.
It is for example widely accepted in America that one of the
principal causes of the problem called urban decay, and one of the
main obstacles to its solution, is the patchwork of authorities
comprising, sometimes, hundreds of units grappling with the affairs
of a single urban complex. The centralised arrangements we have
for raising and disposing of revenue are of particular importance
in terms of the balanced allocation of resources.
4.
It must surely require the most compelling arguments to
abandon the efficiency and economy of this functionally organised
administration in favour of the extravagance and inefficiency of
a fragmented, geographically-based organisation. One looks in
/vain