CONSTITUTION AND ADMINISTRATION
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The Urban Council's responsibilities are restricted to Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and New Kowloon, which have a population of nearly four million. The council's main duties are: public sanitation and cleansing; the licensing and hygienic control of all food premises, offensive trades and bathhouses; and the management and control of civic centres, museums, football stadia, markets, abattoirs, hawkers, cemeteries, crematoria and funeral parlours. Other responsibilities include the provision and management of public libraries and places of public recreation, such as bathing beaches, swimming pools, tennis and squash courts, games halls, sports grounds, playgrounds and parks; the provision and promotion of cultural services and outdoor entertainment; the licensing of places of public entertainment; and liquor licensing. In all these fields, the council's policies and decisions are carried out by the Urban Services Department, the director of which is the principal executive officer of the council under the Urban Council Ordinance.
The council's main revenue is derived from its share (34.8 per cent) of the yield from rates in the urban area. Fees and charges provide other sources of income. In the 1979-80 financial year, the council worked to an overall budget of $680 million.
Advisory Committees
An important aim of the government is that of improving its contacts with the population at large. The government is also concerned to ensure that it acts on the best advice available and that its actions are understood and accepted by those affected. A significant part of the effort to achieve this aim is a comprehensive network of more than 150 advisory bodies. These bodies, which include both government employees and members of the public, are a distinctive feature of the system of government in Hong Kong. Practically all government departments and areas of activity are assisted by advisory bodies of one sort or another. Reviews of the membership and functions of advisory committees and boards are carried out regularly as more committees are created than disbanded because of the ever-increasing complexity and spread of government activities.
Advisory bodies may be based on the common interests of a particular locality (as in the case of mutual aid committees or the rural committees in the New Territories to which have been added eight district advisory boards), or a particular industry (such as the Textiles Advisory Board), or deal with a particular area of community concern (such as the Action Committee Against Narcotics), or of government activity (such as the Transport Advisory Committee). Other examples of such bodies are the Board of Education, the Medical Development Advisory Committee, the Social Welfare Advisory Committee, the Labour Advisory Board, the Trade and Industry Advisory Board, the Social Security Appeals Board, the Metrication Committee and the Country Parks Board.
Civil Service
The civil service provides the staff for all government departments and other units of the administration. During 1978–9 financial year, the number of posts in the civil service grew from 126,500 to 134,700, an increase of six per cent. Recruitment was maintained at a high level and the number of officers increased by 6.1 per cent during the same period from 115,700 to 122,800. Of the total strength, 97.5 per cent were local officers. This indicated that, at that time, one person in every 17 of the estimated adult working popula- tion - or one in 40 of the total population was employed by the government.
The civil service contains a large element of labourers, semi-skilled workers and artisans of one kind or another; their posts total 37,300. The Hong Kong civil service is somewhat unusual in that it does some jobs which in other territories and administrations are done by people who do not belong to the civil service. Elsewhere, for example, staff for hospitals,