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The truth is that in the short term the situation generally is going to get, if anything, worse. The Immigration Department is already very stretched. To deal with the ten million additional travellers over the last two years the department was able to create only 78 additional posts for control points. For the present financial year, because the Civil Service is not being allowed to expand, no provision for any additional posts for the Department has been included in the draft Estimates. In other words for the further increase in travellers this year (and the increase could be of the order of 5 or 5 million) the Department will have to manage with
the staff it has got.
5。
:
!
For the two control points Mrs. Chow specifically mentioned, the consequence for Tai Kok Tsui will be that, because of lack of extra staff (and problems over luggage handling facilities) it is likely to prove impracticable in the current financial year to transfer any of the traffic from Tai Kok Tsui to the new Macau ferry terminal to which it had been hoped to move about 50%. In the case of Man Kam To, most of the new facilities due to be avail-
able in December this year, will simply not be manned, while the
traffic will continue to increase. At the present time, the temporary facilities there include four kiosks for checking vehicles and 14 counters for checking passengers. Of these, the Immigration Department has now only enough staff in normal circumstances to
man two kiosks and four counters most of the time; although for
short periods if the traffic really builds up the Department can manage a maximum of three,, kiosks and six counters.
The new
facilities to be ready in December will include 12 kiosks and 28
counters. Most of them will have to remain empty and without
additional staff there can be no question of extending the hours in
which the terminal is open, either.
6.
Against this background, I doubt if we can pursue Mrs.
Rita FAN's idea of introducing charges at Man Kam To and LoWu now.
Our intention has been not to consider moving in this direction
until the new facilities at both Man Kam To and Lowu are ready.
But we will now give some thought to the possibility of starting with
a smaller charge earlier as the services at the various control points improve.