HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
see the early installation of air-conditioning systems in the cooked food centres in the UC Java Road and Electric Road Complexes. Moreover, it is also hoped that the Council can step up measures to control the unlicensed hawkers and improve the hygiene of the district.
With these remarks, Mr. Chairman, I support the motion.
CHAIRMAN (in English): Thank you. For personal reasons, I have taken the liberty to advance the next speaker to be the Hon. Li Wah-ming.
THE HON. LI WAH-MING (in Cantonese): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Because I have to attend another meeting, and so I have to speak first.
My present speech, like those of previous years, is divided into two parts. The first part will concentrate on the work of the Urban Council while the second will deal with issues outside its jurisdiction. In the second part, I shall talk about constitutional reforms, a topic already covered by Miss Christina TING at the beginning of the debate, and I shall mainly voice my feelings.
Last year, I raised the point that if the Council were to improve its image, the first thing to do was to strengthen its work in hawker control. We need to be determined in curbing illegal hawking activities, especially those illegal cooked food stalls which operate at night. As my constituency, Kwun Tong, is a district that ranks top among the black spots of this nature, I am especially concerned about the performance of the Council in this respect. Once again, I would like to express my gratitude to staff of the Urban Services Department, for I find that the number of raids has increased and that their efforts throughout the past year are gradually bearing fruit. In this regard, the police have also played their part by offering their co-operation and assistance. Nevertheless, I am of the view that better results could have been achieved if information about night-time operations had been kept under stricter confidence. Here, I sincerely appeal to staff of the Urban Services Department not to relax their efforts, so that a good image of the Council in hawker control can be built up as far as possible.
Another area of the Council's work that has my full support and earns my appreciation is its community activities jointly organized with grass-root level organizations in various districts. I have noticed, in particular, that the Council has had closer co-operation with the Area Committees of various districts than before. This has enabled cultural and entertaining activities to reach further down to the lower strata of the community, whereby correcting the wrong image that the Council is just a white elephant spending money indiscriminately and catering to the needs of the 'highbrow'.
As regards 'image', I have two more suggestions to make. Firstly, the publicity materials handed out by the Council on its activities are far too many. This is not only my personal feeling; but also that of quite a number of my fellow district board members. They all say that they often receive too many leaflets, pamphlets, and posters (which are indeed finely printed) from the Council. However, they usually throw all these away soon afterwards. Thus, if every month some 400 district board members in Hong Kong all receive publicity materials from the Council and dispose of them this way, the amount of waste would be enormous. I think the Council should review the present distribution practice of these materials and consider cutting funds on publicity. In fact, minimizing the use of paper is to help protect the environment. Secondly, I would like to touch on the confidentiality of minutes of meetings and papers of the Council. All these are classified as 'restricted', which means that they should not be made public or be shown to outsiders. Besides, a lot of other papers are classified as 'confidential'. In my opinion, only a small part of these papers needs to be classified as such, and the rest should be thrown open. This is because, as a council, the greater its transparency is, the easier the citizens can understand its work. In the long run, we can build up our status among the people and tie ourselves in with the prevailing political climate of this society.
Now, I would turn to the controversial constitutional package. The Governor, Mr. Christopher PATTEN, has proposed a number of constitutional reforms, one of which is the abolition of the appointed seats of the two municipal councils and the district boards. This proposal, especially the part dealing with the deletion of the appointed seats of the two councils, has aroused much concern in this Council and given rise to a few heated debates. I have learnt from the newspapers that a number of my colleagues in this Council commented on and criticized this proposal in the debate held last Tuesday. But do they have any opinion on the other proposals in the constitutional package? Do we all hold the same view that if the Governor withdrew the package in such a way as if nothing had happened, then everything would be all right? I have very deep feelings about the recent controversy over the constitutional reforms. I have been questioning myself: 'who are they that are fighting for the well-being of the people of Hong Kong?', and 'who are they that really care for us?' Many people say that China is our biological mother and the United Kingdom our foster mother. Since the beginning of negotiations between the Chinese and the British governments in 1984, the relationship between China and the United Kingdom (i.e., our biological mother and foster mother) has undergone a lot of ups and downs. At present, it is at its lowest ebb. Helpless as we are, could we, the people of Hong Kong, solve the problems just by sighing or swearing? During the second half of the transitional period, do we not have the right to express our opinions on the 1994/95 election? Is it that the reform proposals put forward by Mr. Christopher PATTEN would bring about a lot of crises? Or is there really a conspiracy behind his proposals? If one always looks at things with suspicion, conjecturing about secret plots and motives, it will be very difficult for one to make accurate judgements and it can easily lead to misunderstandings. Launching a series of verbal attacks, the Chinese side (our biological parent) took the offensive in the so-called 'megaphone' diplomacy, and, just as what Miss Christina TING said, has further undermined the confidence of Hong Kong people. The success that Hong Kong is enjoying is...
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