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and obligations so that they will be well prepared to participate in direct elections in the future. Otherwise, it would be meaningless to have direct elections if people cast their votes blindly. In view of these, there should be no delay in the promotion of civic education. Primary and secondary school students today will be the future leaders of society. On the other hand, the young people now would be close to the age of retirement at the time of 1997 and they would not be much effective at the political scene then. Therefore, I hoped that the Education Department would step up liaison with the public in an effort to fully promote civic education and put it at the foremost place of the school curriculum.
Recently campaigns and issues in connection with respecting the aged have grown to be the centre of our attention. The population of the aged is increasing and among them a lot are single. It is pitiful for them to have their meals all alone every day. I would like to know whether space could be allocated in Urban Council complexes for setting up canteens for the aged, or invite caterers by tender to provide inexpensive but healthy meals to the elderly? Such schemes are more practical and advantageous to them than the empty talks of respecting the aged. Details of the scheme will be left to a working party to be set up. Before further study can be carried out I wish as the first step, this scheme which is specially designed to benefit the elderly can be approved. I believe that prompted by love, my colleagues will vote for it.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I support the motion.
MR. STEPHEN M. L. LAU (in English):-Mr. Chairman, this conventional debate provides an opportunity for us to report on our work over the past twelve months, to criticize work which has not been done satisfactorily, and to spell out expectations for future improvements.
At the beginning of the year, the Administration Select Committee convened a working party to look into the committee structure, to investigate whether any change was required to improve the working system of the Council. After four months' deliberation, no consensus was reached except on the abolition of the District Relations Select Committee. This confirmed that no significant benefits would arise from any changes. The Council is business-like, professionally and cohesively managed. The reason we agreed to abolish the District Relations Select Committee was due to ten representatives being elected to the Council indirectly through District Boards from 1 April this year, district issues will then be brought up by them directly to the functional select committees.
Another working party was also formed to examine the physical structure of Council Chamber, committee rooms, and related facilities needed when Council membership is increased to forty. Government agreed to provide over 100 million dollars to reprovision the Council in temporary Chambers before a permanent new building could be built. Credit must be given to members of the working party in that they suggested some alterations to give the existing Chamber its present form which only cost a few million dollars.
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The Public Information Unit is responsible for the daily routine public relations, answering complaints and promoting our facilities and services to the public. This year, apart from producing a wonderful annual report and fact sheets, extra efforts were made to reproduce volumes of out-of-print books published by the Urban Council in the past but are eagerly sought after by the public. Further effort is being made to re-package the city news, to make it a 32-page attractive magazine shortly.
In 1982, Council has decided to establish a training school to carry out local training at various venues. In the latter part of the year, approval was given to build a permanent school at Lai Chi Kok, which will be completed in 1992 at a cost of approximately 75 million dollars. This reaffirms the Council's determination to provide high-quality services through better-trained staff. This school is also able to provide additional training for staff required by other Government departments such as health inspectors, for the Regional Council and the Health and Welfare Branch, who will look after the importation of food in the future.
Urbtix System-In recent months, there have been some allegations that Council monopolizes the culture field through the Urbtix Ticketing System. I am obliged to put this into perspective. It was never the intention of the Council to introduce the Urbtix System to monopolize the ticketing market. On the contrary, it is to promote our service to the public by providing easy access on a fair basis. As everyone in the market is aware, venues under Urban Council management provide 28,000 seats per night, and under Regional Council approximately 3,000 seats per night and 5,000 seats per night from the Academic Halls. This rapid growth is becoming greater than our computer software can handle. The Administration Select Committee is at present looking into improvement to the software to increase the speed of producing tickets even by replacing or adding hardware if it is required.
Establishment--The Urban Services Department maintains a fairly consistent low growth rate in strength, even though the value for money study is a continuing effort within the Department, which is trying to save ratepayer's money through redeployment and cutting down duplications. In addition, attempts were being made to achieve major savings of money by increasing the contracting out of services.
There are many ambitious projects that Council is undertaking in its building programme which are due to be completed during the next few years and for which funds and manpower are required for the management. It goes without saying that extra efforts will be needed to seek Government's support, particularly in the following areas:
(1) The privatization of abattoirs should be pushed ahead to save the huge amount of deficit incurred by the Council.
(2) The earlier settlement of full departmentalization of Urban Services Department to streamline unnecessary bureaucratic red tape.