instruction was that the Chief Secretary should do no more than to explore and report back on the possibility of extending the scheme to cover recreational travel and university students, but the Government Secretariat interpreted this as an instruction to draw up proposals for the further extension of the scheme which it did without acting on its earlier judgment that subsidies for recreational travel should be examined separately from the student travel scheme in conjunction with the Commissioner for Recreation and Culture. Both proposals were implemented as part of the revised scheme.
191.
The revised student travel scheme came into effect on 1 September 1981 but it has had similar administrative problems to the previous scheme and costs about 2 times more. Despite the surveys of student travel carried out to establish the travel patterns on which the grants to transport operators could be fixed, it was found that there were so many variables and uncertainties in the figures that interminable negotiations with the operators ensued. It was impossible to establish the extent of any overpayment, as claimed by the Government, or underpayment, as claimed by the operators. The administrative problems and the increasing cost of the scheme has again caused members of the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council to raise doubts and express their concern on the merits of the student travel scheme. Accordingly, an inter-departmental working group, appointed by the Secretary for Transport, was established in July 1985 to review the policy of subsidizing student travel and to consider alternative forms of assistance.
192.
The Secretary for Transport has pointed out in his reply to the audit review that the student travel scheme involved a number of branches and departments and because the responsibility for the matter did not rest entirely with his branch he had found it necessary to prepare a consolidated submission based on the comments from the various branches and departments. The Secretary for Transport was unable to explain satisfactorily why, in 1979 when the decision was made to continue the scheme as an educational measure, the Executive Council was not clearly advised that the previous treatment of the scheme as an education policy matter was incorrect. However, he mentioned that in a Memorandum for the Executive Council in December 1980, it was stated that the general feeling of the Board of Education was that the problem of student travel subsidy was not fundamentally an educational one. The Secretary stated that it was then up to the Governor in Council to decide whether the Board of Education's feelings should be accepted. The Secretary added that the