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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
When the Estimates were tabled two months ago, I urged you to project your calculations of certain staff requirements as far ahead as might be feasible and to review them on a progressive basis. I said, too, that this Council had a right to expect that Government would provide your Department with a complement of well-trained personnel to discharge its many functions without detriment to the Council's various programmes. I then concluded by warning you, Mr. Chairman, that shortage of staff with the requisite specialist training would impair your Department's ability to execute this Council's policies. Let us hope that the Department's capacity will never lag behind the Council's ambition to give ever better service to the public.
Mr. Chairman, may I say, in supporting your Motion, how I have always been impressed by the courtesy, intelligence and efficiency of all those in your and other connected departments with whom I have had reason to come in contact. I can only hope that the requests that I, in my capacity of Councillor, make for action or information have not been unduly trying. It is indeed pleasing to work in such a happy atmosphere where, no matter how serious the subject may be, we do not lose our perspective or, perhaps even more important, lose our sense of humour.
Mr. Chairman, may I through you on behalf of the Appointed Members acknowledge the presence at this meeting today in the public gallery of our ci-devant charming member, Dr. BELL.
MR. B. A. BERNACCHI :- Mr. Chairman, it is never my custom to ape anyone and this Annual Debate is beginning to look like an aping of the Budget motion in the Legislative Council. Members by a convenient custom have the liberty to talk at this meeting over a whole range of subjects not otherwise within the purview of the Urban Council, and the only difference to the Legislative Council motion that I can see is that Officials have a month in which to prepare their replies instead of 10 days as in the Legislative Council. Whilst I am all in favour of the custom at least once a year of giving the Unofficial Members of this Council liberty to range over all subjects having to do with the good Government of Hong Kong, I am of the opinion that its proximity to the debate in the Legislative Council detracts considerably from its value, and the first thing that I would like to say in the coming year is that arrangements should be made to have the Annual Conventional Debate in the summer or autumn of the year, and not in April, as at present.
I note with interest and approval that this year the aims of the Council contain a paragraph dealing with the expansion of the scope of its present duties. I compliment Mr. KINGHORN, our former Chairman, and yourself, Sir, in consenting to this paragraph being included in the aims of the Council. The Unofficials last year put forward suggestions as to this Council being represented on a number of committees and also a suggestion on changing the name "Urban Council", and I do hope His Excellency the Governor gives further thought to these suggestions in the coming year.
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suggestions as to this Council being represented on a number of committees and also a suggestion on changing the name "Urban Council", and I do hope His Excellency the Governor gives further thought to these suggestions in the coming year.
I should also like to repeat my words said on this annual occasion several years ago that the Commissioner of Police ought to be an official member of this Council. The Commissioner of Police is far too important a man in the everyday life of the Colony's population to avoid the obligation of sitting on this Council, which is the only Council on which a small proportion of the people of Hong Kong have a voice by way of elected representation. He is intimately concerned in the majority of the jobs that the Government gives us to do. I heartily concur in the observations of two learned members of the Magistrates' Bench in Hong Kong when they recently criticized the exercise by the Police of their enormous powers of arrest, for which as Commissioner he is responsible. I know just recently of a licensed hawker who has been arrested on a number of occasions by Policemen, or more properly by one Policeman in particular, when the merits of the case notwithstanding, he could have easily had his licence number taken and been issued with a summons or a series of summonses. The man in question is almost blind, has little to live on, and on two occasions when his situation was brought to my attention I have had to put up the bail money for him, to enable him to be released from Police detention. If the Commissioner of Police were a member of this Council I should undoubtedly ask him a question about it. I crave Members' pardon if I repeat what I formerly said about the history of this matter. The Commissioner of Police used to be a member of this Council still was a member even just after the war. A certain Commissioner of Police, however, failed to turn up almost to any meeting and instead of the then Governor hauling him over the coals and insisting on his attending the meetings, he was allowed to go off the Council and his place was taken instead by the Social Welfare Officer, then not even a head of a department although the post has subsequently been upgraded into Director of Social Welfare. I do not say for one moment that now that the Social Welfare Department has been recognized as a necessary department by Government, the Director of it should go off the Council. Mr. ALEXANDER and his predecessors have always been most helpful to this Council and done more than their fair share of this Council's work in various Select Committees. But I do say that the Commissioner of Police should go back on to the Council, and from what I know of Mr. HEATH, the present Commissioner, I should be very surprised if in that event we do not have cleared up, almost in no time at all, the differences between our work on the Council and the Police powers and duties to Hong Kong as a whole.
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