t
4
5
6
7
Ub 8
pp 9
10
11
12
13
Vas
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 1 1 0
29
30
31
32
33
6734
35
36
:
And to the $609 million under the present
policy, we should add a personal emoluments bill of $180 200 million for the 125 posts mentioned earlier. I wonder what has gone wrong during the policy-making process?
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三
Even now negotiations are still dragging on between the farmers and the administration,. and since the passage of the amended bill, Government has already committed a further sum of $8 million to carry out demonstrations in private farms in order to convince or appease the farmers, and I cannot imagine what the final bill will look like. Another case of convoluted policy is the student Travel subsidy scheme, which, if I am not mis- taken, has not been submitted to the Executive Council yet, but which I suspect from the way the Administration is handling it, will sail through Executive Council and become the revised policy If my understanding is correct, the evolution or convolution started in 1971, when the Government decided to reimburse Kowloon Motor Bus for loss in revenue arising from con- cessionary fares given to students above the age of 12.
The scheme was later extended, a year later, to other public transport operators. Here, I have no wish to fully trace the develop-
wish to ment of the policy, but simply point out
to
that had a policy been to require and allow public transport operators to balance their books by absorbing the loss in revenue through incre- mental increases in general fare levels, there would not have been public criticism including that from the Council, from this Council, that the Government is misusing public funds, that the
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are
a subsidy from public funds is disproportionately