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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
MR. STEPHEN M. L. LAU (in English):-This has been a busy and productive year for the Administration Select Committee, which I have the honour to chair. At almost every meeting during the year we have studied, considered, fine-tuned and ultimately approved a seemingly never-ending flow of committee papers dealing with requests for additional staff for the Urban Services Department. Every time we discuss such papers it brings home to the Committee the speed with which the Council is expanding its services and providing more venues for the use of the public.
This has been an extremely big year in the Council's Capital Works Programme with one new venue after another opening for the enjoyment of the public. To name some of the largest they include the magnificent sports ground at Kowloon Bay, the ultra-modern recreation ground at To Kwa Wan, the Po On Road Multi-purpose Complex, the cooked-food centre in Wong Chuk Hang, plus a whole range of smaller projects.
As each of these new venues and services comes into use, the Council must provide the skilled men and women to manage them and the semi-skilled back-up staff plus, of course, the workmen to perform the many manual tasks involved.
This steady staff build-up is adding many millions of dollars to the Council's annual wages bill but such expenditure goes hand in hand with the pace of our speeded-up construction programme.
Another important area of the Committee's work is our participation in the Department's Value for Money Studies Steering Group. The Group includes the three Deputy Directors from the Department, and in attendance at its meetings are representatives from the Finance and Civil Service Branches of the Government Secretariat.
The Group commissions studies of the Department's operations through the Management Services Unit, whose staff are qualified Management Services and Organization and Methods practitioners. The Steering Group monitors the work of these studies through regular progress reports. It also considers the recommendations of the various Value for Money studies before submission to the relevant functional Select Committees for endorsement and subsequent implementation.
Recommendations from the studies that have so far been implemented have resulted in more effective services being provided at much reduced costs. The streamlining of work procedures, the introduction of more productive deployment strategies, and the use of tight time standards for the measurement and control of work, have to date enabled 655 posts to be deleted. Substantial improvements in services have been made to refuse collection, gully cleansing, mechanical sweeping and street washing. The total savings achieved to date amount to $116 million. Other recommendations in the course of implementation affect the staffing and operation of the manual street sweeping service, and very significant savings are envisaged in the long term.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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This is just part of the Administration Select Committee's wide-ranging responsibilities.
Here I wish to compliment the Department for their effort and hard work to achieve all impossible tasks that Council hands over to them within their limited available human resources, in the financial year in which their establishment strength is almost nil.
On the public relations front, the Council, through the Administration Select Committee, has taken special efforts to inform members of the public of its increased services and new venues, and widespread publicity has been given to the sports grounds, indoor games halls and other facilities that have come on stream in the past year.
On the publications front, apart from the well-received full-colour Annual Report, the Council this year also produced a set of 11 District Profiles giving the facilities and services supplied in all 11 districts; also it produced another magazine-type booklet called The Bauhinia Blooms which outlines the Council's very considerable success story since it was given financial autonomy in 1973. These two publications, along with the handy pocket-size Urbco & USD in Figures, have been widely distributed to District Boards and community organizations and have served a very useful purpose in demonstrating how the Council has upgraded the life-style of urban dwellers.
Concerning the Council's basic role of protecting public health, there has been a continuing publicity campaign to illustrate measures taken to protect the public from cholera and other diseases which may be spread by illegal food-for-man hawkers. Combined with this, there has been publicity throughout the year on various aspects of health education.
Other publicity measures include the staging of a student essay competition which attracted a most encouraging response from hundreds of students who, in their essays, showed not only that they were well aware of the Council's work and responsibilities but that they very much appreciated what the Council does for the man in the street.
It seems that at least, the young appreciate what the Council is doing!
After the publication of the Green Paper on the further development of Representative Government in May last year, the Council and public opinions have urged the Government not to change the constitution of this Council for the sake of changing it. These views have been further supported by the Survey Report. Despite all these sentiments, Government announced to cease ex-officio membership of Councillors in District Boards, which has led members of the Council to wonder what else is to be done to the Council—a White Paper to be published in February yet to be waited and seen.
With these remarks, I support the motion.
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