HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
(7) MR. H. CHEONG-LEEN asked the following question:-
Will the Commissioner for Resettlement please advise how many letters addressed to the Department in the Chinese language were received from the public during November 1964? Will the Commissioner for Resettlement also state how many replies were made to these letters by the Department with a Chinese translation attached? Also, how many replies were made in which the Department did not attach a Chinese translation?
THE COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT replied as follows:-
This question is related to a previous one which Mr. CHEONG-LEEN asked at the meeting of this Council on the 3rd of November and which the Chairman answered on behalf of the Urban Services and Resettlement Departments. If the record of the Resettlement Department during November is not as good as it might have been, this is due to a slight delay on my part in getting instructions out to branch heads and to officers in Estates and Cottage Areas. In consequence, an unknown number of letters in Chinese were answered in English during the earlier part of the month. But a start has been made. As I said in reply to a supplementary question at the November meeting, I will report progress monthly to the Resettlement Management Committee, and I propose to do so through the medium of the monthly progress report which all Members of that Committee receive. Mr. CHEONG-LEEN will therefore receive regular information on this subject. During November, 3,387 letters in Chinese were received at the Resettlement Department Headquarters and in the various estate and cottage area offices and 667 letters in Chinese were sent in reply. These figures do not convey the whole picture. Some of these inward letters did not require a reply, and many others, as well as many in English, received a reply on a standard duplicated form that carries both an English and a Chinese version; a total of 2,798 such standard form letters was sent. Furthermore, some letters in Chinese received near the end of the month required investigation and they would receive a reply in Chinese in the following month. By comparison, out of 1,226 letters in English which were received in November, only 765 replies were sent out.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
465
(8) MR. H. CHEONG-LEEN asked the following question:
At the August 1963 meeting of this Council, I requested the Chairman to inquire from Government as to its plans to build an aquarium or oceanarium in Hong Kong. Since Government has recently announced that it intends to seek expert advice on the subject, will the Chairman please inquire from Government whether any expert has yet arrived in Hong Kong and approximately when his report is expected to be submitted to Government? Will such report be released to the public?
THE CHAIRMAN replied as follows:
I think, Sir, that there must be some misunderstanding on this. In fact it is the Hong Kong Tourist Association which has invited a consultant to come here to make a survey of the feasibility of establishing an oceanarium. The consultant, who is the President of the Marine-land Oceanarium of Florida, is expected to arrive about March next year. It is thought that his report will be ready by the end of May or the beginning of June 1965. It is not known whether the Hong Kong Tourist Association will release the report to the public.
Government's position remains as stated in the reply to your question at the meeting of this Council in August 1963. MR. CHEONG-LEEN:-Mr. Chairman, would you be good enough to contact the Executive Director of the Tourist Association to see whether he would be willing to co-operate by making a copy of the report, when completed, available to Members of this Council?
CHAIRMAN:-Yes, Sir.
MR. CHEONG-LEEN: Thank you.
(9) MR. H. CHEONG-LEEN asked the following question:-
Will the Director of Urban Services Department please state what compensation has been paid or will be paid to the families of the injured boy and the two men killed in the recent accident caused by an Urban Services Department lorry at the mouth of Wyndham Street leading into Queen's Road Central?
THE SECRETARY FOR CHINESE AFFAIRS replied as follows:
Pending the Coroner's decision on the report submitted to him by the Police, it has not been possible to make any final recommendations to Government on the compensation
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