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few, albeit I have to pay a high club fees. Is this for the public? I don't think so. I think it is only for the privileged few. In the over-populated Hong Kong to form a club with a few hundred membership will benefit just 0.001% of the population. This is not for the interest of the public at all. This is only to promote, to introduce advantages and privileges for the very few affluent, powerful and privileged groups. And as many other members pointed out, we would like to promote sports. We would like to organize casual users to maximize the use of our facilities, to benefit the most people and not to restrict and offer our services to a privileged few.
Having said all these, the primary objective of the Council is to see that our facilities are easily accessible to every individual and every sector of the community. It is not our intention to follow the way of the established sports clubs whereby only those who can only afford could benefit e.g. $800 or $1,000 a month's fee to be a club member. The suggestion that the Urban Council should allow the SDB to turn the Council's sports facilities into venue based clubs, something which they have strongly lobbied for, runs contrary to our policies for the reasons I have pointed out. In actual fact, they form quite a number of these clubs to project a false image that they are playing the big brothers and they are the saviour of all the sports bodies who may have their own bases in our facilities and deny the usage of these facilities by many other casual users.
Another point I want to address on is the need for the Council to organize recreation and sport activities at the grassroot level. In order to optimise the use of existing facilities, there is a need to organize activities at the facilities to channel for over-filled peak hours into what is commonly considered the low periods of usage. This is the philosophy adopted by facilities managers worldwide. Outlays in provisions for recreation and sport very often results in savings in health care in the community. I am certain that the Council has embarked on the right track and in the years to come we should be injecting more resources into this area of work so that our activities can reach a higher percentage of the total population.
The next point I want to address on is the accusation that sports should not be organized by civil servants as such people cannot be expected to have the same degree of dedication, enthusiasm and expertise as knowledgeable people working within the club and NSA structure. This is a big shame for this remark. This is the most repulsive and offensive the speech made by a certain member of SDB. It is also a big insult to elite civil servants who are well trained and well experienced and some of whom formed the devoted team in our department. I raise my head to them because they have been doing wonderful programmes for the past years. This insult comes totally untimely. Those of us who work closely with our USD staff in this field know that among our staff, there are extremely well qualified people both in the aspects of professional training and also wealth of experience in recreation management. I think no Councillor present today will dispute that these cannot be produced by staff who lacked dedication, enthusiasm and knowledge to do a job well. I doubt very much whether the person who said this has all these essential elements namely dedication, enthusiasm and knowledge as extensive as our staff. This is in fact an inflammatory and groundless remark and it shows the ignorance of the speaker and serves no purpose other than to dampen the spirit and morale of our hard working team of departmental staff. He was doing a disservice to the community at large and has totally misled the Hong Kong community as a whole.
As for the claim that such organized activities by Urban Council are at a tremendous cost to the rate payers. If I may quote some figures and tell you the economic of this. The public should be able to draw their conclusions. In the fiscal year 1993/94, we spent $17 million for the organization of 7,242 district programmes for the participation of 353,651 people. The revenue on participation fees was estimated to be $10 million. This works out to be less than $20 per head. I don't think it is extravagant by any standard considering that some of the programmes take a month to complete. Mr. Ronnie WONG proposed status quo both in the political, economical, social, sports, arts and many other fields, I cannot agree more. There should not be drastic changes before 1997 and then no change for 50 years after 1997. The SDB with its limited statutory ordinance has been behaving like a spoiled child. So in conclusion, let us pray, all mighty god, a child was born. An enormous spoiled child has been born. Let us pray that with thy power, thy wisdom, thy glory, you enable us to bring him up and not let him throw stones around the glass house in the run up to 1997, Amen!
MR. B. BERNACCHI (in English):-Correction, not per month, per year, $20 per head per year.
CUC (in English): Yes, thank you. Mr. PAO, as you are the person who moves the motion, you have the right of reply or make a summary or highlight some of the points raised by members. You have the right to do so. It is your option.
MR. PAO PING-WING (in Cantonese): Mr. Chairman, I would like to recap briefly what has been said in today's motion debate. Colleagues have clearly made a number of points. First of all, Hong Kong needs a variety of sports bodies to co-operate with each others and respect each others in sports promotion. Secondly, sports in Hong Kong has such a nature and history that we don't need a supremo. What we need is partnership. In other words, the spirit of partnership is required in sports promotion in Hong Kong. Thirdly, in promoting sports, the Urban Council has had experience in a number of decades and a track record that we have been playing a very important role in developing sports at the grassroots level.
At the same time, while we are promoting sports at the grassroots level, we haven't forgotten the needs of other sports organizations. We have been rendering them our assistance. In light of such, we feel that if the Urban Council is working in the interest of the community, trying to satisfy the sports needs of the Hong Kong people, hoping to raise the sports standard of Hong Kong and striving for the overall development of Hong Kong sports, we must make the Hong Kong SDB understand the importance of division of labour. We must make Hong Kong SDB understand the importance of co-operation.
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