HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL —15 March 1989 香港立法局 一九八九年三月十五日
67
the level of deputy director and downwards. It is disappointing that not only has Government rejected this very consultancy report but has gone further to split the department into two now, from the level of director downwards. For the last seven years I have been consistently objecting to such a division and my stand remains the same. As I object to this reorganization, I will abstain from voting on this resolution and vote against the use of funds to facilitate the splitting of the Medical and Health Department.
MR. CHOW: Sir, I support in principle the proposed splitting of the Medical and Health Department into the Department of Health and the Department of Hospital Services but have some reservations about the implementation date, that is, 1 April 1989.
It is because there is still chaos in the overall operational and administrative structure after the splitting of the Medical and Health Department, especially the nursing service which forms a major part of medical and health care system. If anything goes wrong, it will inevitably hinder the overall running of the department.
The nursing structure originally consisted of three streams. They were clinical (hospital and out-patient department services), health and education streams which were merged to form the present structure in 1984. At that time, most of the nurses were strongly against the merging as it would lead to operational and administrative problems in the service.
In 1987, the Executive Council endorsed the recommendations made in the Scott Consultancy Report about the setting up of the Hospital Authority and the splitting of the Medical and Health Department into two separate departments. This clearly indicated that the merging policy in nursing was a wrong step taken by the Government at that time.
With regard to timing, I propose to defer the implementation date of splitting the Medical and Health Department for the following reasons :
Firstly, the consultative document do not provide clear and concrete solutions to the confusion in the organizational structure of the two re-organized departments especially in the nursing service. Even at the two meetings with the Administration last week, I still got different explanations from the officials which had indeed confused me. I do not know whether the other Members had the same feeling or not. Sir, I think further clarification and consultation are necessary before the implementation of the splitting.