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with low standard funeral services. In my view, the basic attitude we must take is that the Urban Council is providing much more than just a funeral hall: we are providing a service. If we simply confine our role to hiring out the hall and its ancillary accommodation facilities, we are falling into the old trap of providing only the barest minimum and leaving at the same time the field open to corrupt practices to hold members of the bereaved family to ransom.
In more specific terms, in my view, for each and every one new public funeral hall, the Urban Council should provide, on an absolutely non-profit-making basis, the following services in addition to hiring out the funeral hall and its ancillary accommodation facilities:
(a) the provision of a trained Master of Ceremony;
(b) the provision of background funeral music--there is no reason why the Urban Council should not have its own bands which are trained properly to provide decent and proper music for a dignified funeral. In this field the Urban Council is by no means a new hand. We are already providing splendid music for the enjoyment of the living. There is no reason why the Urban Council could not maintain its high musical reputation in this field as well. Indeed, one of the sad features nowadays in Hong Kong is that only for burials in a church could you have decent funeral music;
(c) the provision of a protocol advisory service in each public funeral hall. This service should advise the bereaved families in the context of their needs things such as proper wreath and apothegm or epitaph arrangements as well as reception ar- rangements for those attending the funeral. By doing this we eliminate with one stroke the situation in which members of the bereaved family could be held to ransom by any unscru- pulous middleman who offers his services to the helpless family. I take it too that our public funeral halls will be equipped with a good public address system as well as with proper seating in the funeral halls to provide the necessary dignity for the occasion.
These are in my view the services that we must at least provide in addition to hiring out the hall and its ancillary facilities. Indeed, as I have said above, the Urban Council in this respect must be business- like in the sense that we must provide what the public needs and not what we think they would need. In this connection, there is no harm at all to aim at providing two if not more types of service: the de-luxe funeral services which should be such that it should surpass what is
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now available in the private funeral parlours in terms of standard and the general type of funeral services which should match those which is now available in the private section. This would provide the necessary flexibility in approach so as to cater for members of the public with very different funeral expenses budgets in mind.
No doubt what I have said today would alarm some of the vested interests in the field of funeral services. To them I would say that the Urban Council, being the only municipal authority run entirely by unofficials, has the duty to pioneer into a field in the interest of the public. Indeed, the interest of the rate-paying public would be protected. I also offer no apology for advocating that the standard of our services in the funeral halls should surpass those that obtained in private funeral halls. There is absolutely no reason why any Urban Council facility should be a second best. We might have led ourselves into this unfor- tunate position in the past but there is no reason why we must de- liberately hold ourselves back in future so as to enable private operators in the field to hold members of the bereaved family to ransom. May I urge the Department to rise up to the occasion and may I look forward to receiving proposals from the Department in my capacity as Chairman of the Cemeteries, Crematoria and Funeral Parlours Select Committee in the very near future. May I too look forward to the day when the staff who were actually managing the Urban Council public funeral halls would take this new attitude that we are providing far more than just the hiring out of a hall but that we are providing a fuller and real service, a service which could be of tremendous comfort to members of the bereaved family.
Before I conclude my speech today, I should like to make two other observations in a totally different subject based on my involvement with the Urban Council's outdoor entertainment programme in my capacity as Chairman of the Entertainments Sub-Committee of the City Hall and Entertainments Select Committee. The Urban Council's out- door entertainment programme has been headlined by one of our newspapers recently as being a programme which is "unparallel in the world" and I think that there is every reason for such a headline. It is a programme which is very large in scope: this year the programme budget was some $2.5 million rising to $3.5 million during the next financial year. During this financial year, we have reason to believe that as many as one million people might be attending the free enter- tainment programme which provides mass entertainment shows in the form of variety shows, popular concerts, Lunar New Year fiestas, a sum- mer programme which includes items such as dances, music, folk groups, launch picnics, swimming parties, fun fairs, painting competitions and