4
Board had failed to push through the proposal for a new cultural centre.
Ever since 1988, the Fifteen started to lobby members of the Regional
Council one by one. The Regional Council finally agreed to allocate funds
for the project despite opposition from the Regional Services Department.
However, not all the policies of the Fifteen have the support
of the grass-root organizations.
In the allocation of resources of the District Board, the Fifteen
have been accused of channelling funds previously spent on cultural and
recreational activities to civil education. In the past, residents organizations
in Kwai Tsing District used to applied to the District Board for funds and
organize activities to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival by themselves.
But such activities were now centralized- dividing the whole of Kwai Tsing
District into 8 sub-districts. Such arrangement was not accepted by some
organizations. CHAN Man-kar further pointed out that the government and
many organizations had already given much publicity to the Basic Law
during 1988, but Kwai Tsing District Board still endorsed the appropriation
of several tens of thousands of dollars for the purpose of launching a
publicity campaign to press for a democratic basic law.
In fact, during the 3 years when the democrats are in power, the
expenses of the Culture and Recreation Committee still registered a 10%
increase. It was on the several "District Festivals" that expenses have
been pared down. For instance, the allocation for the Kwai Tsing Sports
Festival and Arts Festival were reduced from $300,000 to $200,000. LEE
Wing-tat refuted the above accusation by saying that since they took the
reins, they had stepped up appropriations for grass-root organizations.
In the past when mutual aid committees organized activities they could
only apply for funds to meet 2/3 of the expenses, but they now got 100%
subsidies. Only the expenditure on big items such as District Festival
were trimmed down. LEE Kin-sang, also one of the Fifteen, pointed out
that except the Administration and Publicity Committee, all the other
committees in Kwai Tsing District Board had set aside funds which were
opened to application by residents groups for organizing activities. Such
openness of resources allocation was rarely seen in other district boards.