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(b) If so, can he say how soon this essential staff can
be recruited?
(c) If not, could the Commissioner for Resettlement please advise the Council on what progress has been made in getting this essential staff to enable the Resettlement Department to be fully effective in its work for the benefit of the one million-plus residents of Resettlement Estates?
THE COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT replied as follows:
I have been informed that the request for extra labourers will
be considered by Finance Committee to-morrow.
If the request is approved, I expect that these new teams could be in operation two months after approval is given.
(5) & (6) MR. H. CHEONG-LEEN and MR. D. J. R. BLAKER asked the following questions:
Can the Chairman, Urban Council advise whether the Colonial Secretariat has approved his department's request for approximately 100 extra staff of various grades for hawker liaison work?
(a) If so, how soon is it estimated that this essential
staff will be recruited?
(b) What is the present establishment of the Hawker
Liaison Section?
(c) What is the actual strength of the Section at present? (d) What increases are planned in the establishment of the Section and when is it envisaged that such increased posts could be filled?
THE CHAIRMAN, URBAN COUNCIL replied as follows:-
Questions 5 and 6 concern proposed staff increases for the Hawker Liaison Section. With the kind agreement of Mr. CHEONG-LEEN and Mr. BLAKER, I propose to reply to them both in the one answer.
The present establishment of the Hawker Liaison Section
is:
1 Senior Executive Officer, Class I
2 Senior Health Inspectors
2 Junior Executive Officers
4 Health Inspectors
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11 Overseers
4 Foremen Class II and
26 Labourers.
The Section is fully up to strength at present. Addi- tionally, there are also indoor secretarial and clerical staff of the two Hawker Licensing Offices which also support the Hawker Liaison Section.
To implement the new policy for hawker control, a request was recently made to the Secretariat for the creation of 109 extra posts for the Hawker Liaison Section. I'm glad to say that, at its meeting on July 23rd, Finance Committee approved this increase, on a supernumerary basis in the first instance until it's seen how the new policy works in practice.
Recruiting is already in hand and we hope that, by the middle of next month, most of the extra staff will be available. But that doesn't mean they can start operations at once. They must begin with a period of in-service training, possibly one month.
MR. BLAKER: Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the increase is needed not so much in labourers, but more in the higher grade. Can I be assured that the increase is proportionately, or possibly even more proportionately, at the top of the scale rather than at the bottom?
CHAIRMAN: -The increase has been worked out proportionately both at the top of the scale for the supervisory staff and also for the junior staff. I think it might help to understand rather better why the labourers are required if I explain that there are really two problems to this. The first one is hawker management, that is, in association with District Hawker Consultative Committees, working out re-siting, movements, clearances, planning of new bazaars, conducting of surveys. That is largely for the more senior staff. Then actually physically on the ground we come to the need for more junior staff. That is in field work, the physical job of demarcating sites, the cutting down of outsize stalls, and things like that which are more the work for labourers, and I assure you that there are not more generals than there are labourers for this particular army.
(7) MR. A. de O. SALES asked the following question:
What progress has been made in establishing a practical and realistic hawker policy and what is being done to co- ordinate all efforts to implement such policy?
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