Page 22 of 110
28
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
I have only to add for the present that I pledge my loyalty to the Council, and I assure its members that I shall do my utmost towards the fulfilment of my duties as a member of the Urban Council.
I have read the Statement of Progress and Policy tabled to-day with intense interest and have listened attentively to the Senior Members of the Council commenting on various problems. All these have given me a very comprehensive idea of the wide activities of the Urban Council and the responsibility that rests on the shoulders of members of the Council. In as much as I am a new member, I have to ask the Council's indulgence for reserving my remarks to-day as I cannot possibly do otherwise till I am better acquainted with the working of the Council. So, without any elaboration, I am happy to support the motion.
DR. ALISON M. S. BELL:- Mr. Chairman, while the Statement of Progress and Policy March, 1961 which is before us to-day runs to 13 foolscap pages, the first few words of its introduction really serve to sum up the situation, namely; "The wide and varied interests and responsibilities of the Urban Council have remained for the past year substantially the same", add to this the words "and will remain so for 1962" and you have a concise picture; because of course as long as this Council has no independent means of finance and its scope of responsibility is so limited it is unlikely that much more can be done than a mere keeping pace with the increasing health problems brought about by an ever increasing population in an already densely over-crowded area. As long as Education, Medical Services and Transport-Traffic problems are outside the province of this Council we are bound to go on from year to year in substantially the same way despite the fact that as the population grows Educational, Medical and transport-traffic problems become so enormous that mere departments with one person ultimately responsible are unable to cope with the increasing burdens of responsibility and expansions required. An organization which was once sufficient for one million population can never be sufficient for an over three million population, no matter how many more clerks and overseers are employed.
A useful variety of persons have been serving on the Urban Council for a decade and a half, persons who are very much in touch with the day to day problems of the man in the street and with the day to day problems of various Government Departments. It is a great pity that so much able advice and assistance is not made use of better by widening the scope of the Urban Council. I have asked in previous years that the Director of Medical and Health Services should himself sit on this Council in order to bring greater liaison between his department and this Council in Health Matters, and of course Health Matters can scarcely be divorced from Medical Matters as can be seen by the fact that one man is the Director of both Health and Medical Services.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
29
I am delighted therefore that I shall be able to welcome the Deputy Director of Medical and Health Services to this Council. Dr. P. H. TENG is no new-comer to the work of this Council and his appointment is a big step in the right direction.
I have advocated in the past, as have many of my colleagues, that transport-traffic problems should be the responsibility of this Council which should be used as a Highway Authority, while the Honourable Director of Public Works should be assisted on this Council by the Superintendent of Road Works and by the Superintendent of Traffic. At present this Council is represented on a body known as the Traffic Advisory Committee by one member whose voice is too often hushed by official "experts" informing him that the particular traffic problem he has raised is not within the scope of the Advisory Committee and then it turns out not to be within the scope of any known Committee at all, so that however obvious and pressing the problem may be it is thus cursorily dismissed. I have the honour to represent the Council this year on the Traffic Advisory Committee and I take this opportunity of inviting members of the public to contact me throughout the coming year, whenever there is an apparent transport-traffic problem which comes to their attention in their everyday usage of the roads throughout this Colony, either as pedestrians or motorists. If these problems fall outside the scope of the Traffic Advisory Committee so much the better, and so much the stronger will be the case for this Council being made the Authority for dealing with such problems.
In connexion with transport-traffic problems it is worthy of note that there has been no effort on the part of those responsible to solve in any way the parking problem in Kowloon, in fact, if anything, the number of car-parking spaces has been reduced, not of course on paper because more spaces have been officially marked out with more white paint than ever before, but somehow fewer cars can be parked whenever the white paint marks appear than could be parked before! There is no sign of a multi-storey car park in Kowloon although there is an ideal site adjacent to the post-office and parallel to the railway; a five or six storey car park might well be built at this site.
Perhaps if more insistence was placed by the Public Works Department on the provision in all new multi-storey, multi-flatted buildings, of parking spaces for the cars of occupants of these buildings, much of the problem would be solved. This leads me on to a problem that has been increasingly receiving the attention of the Environmental Hygiene Select Committee and all members in their speeches to-day, and that is the appalling state of filth within the precincts of some new multi-storey buildings. Urban Services cleansing staff should not be expected to especially select these buildings for preferential treatment nor be expected to enter these buildings to clean the passageways and alley-ways within the actual building, and yet if the Urban Services Staff do
Page 22 of 110