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Date:
Time:
25.11.86
2.15 to 5.00
Reporter:
JPM
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[3.28 p.m.]
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CHAIRMAN:
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The hearing will continue. May I invite
Mr Morgan, Director of Technical Education and Industrial Training, on the Director of Audit's Report, Paragraphs 125 to 132? (To Mr Ho) Your interest is noted. We shall start with Mr Chung.
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MR CHUNG:
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Mr Director, these queries are directed
to the Tuen Mun and the Sha Tin Technical Institutes projects: can
the Director inform this Committee whether the Vocational Training Council was justified in 1983, in using the early 1982 estimated project costs as current costs?
DTEIT:
Sir, early in 1983 when the Vocational
14 Training Council approved the sketch plans for these two new
Institutes, they were in fact using the estimated costs which had been provided by my Department and had been approved in 1982. I 17 think at the time this was probably the normal Government practice for doing so, but I think with hindsight this was probably not the correct thing to do because at that time the Building Costs Index
was falling and it would have been reasonable to have assumed as the Director of Audit has said, that the costs should have been scaled down but no instruction was received by the Council to do this,
So
I think in it's effort to get the Institutes built as fast as possible,
it took this particular line.
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MR CHUNG:
Mr Director, I think the Council should
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have received the Tender Price Index for the fourth quarter of 1982
earlier, and it should have been used to adjust the estimated project
costs?
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DTEIT:
The Tender Price Indices Sir, I believe
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come out about three months after the end of the particular quarter, and so it would not have been proper for them to use it, although you are right, they could have used perhaps, the previous quarter which was the third quarter and the Index then was in fact, already going
down on what it had been at the beginning of 1982.