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# HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
permanent refuse collection points are not readily available in order to improve the poor environment.
Improvements in street cleansing and environmental health can only be achieved with the co-operation and monitoring of the general public, the Urban Services Department and the Urban Council. As the saying goes, 'Ducks are the first to know when the river water turns warm as spring comes.' The public, as masters of society and users of municipal services, know best about their own rights and the public health conditions of their environment. Public opinions and complaints are thus our true beacon lights. As a democratically elected Council, this Council has the people's mandate and are therefore accountable to the public and should reflect their opinion in the Council. Therefore 'politicians should speak often and dare to speak'. We should dare to point out existing problems as well as shortcomings in our policies. For example, it is because the Democratic Party has raised the 'temporary refuse collection points' problem that the temporary refuse collection points will one day be closed. The Department should also put serving the public in the forefront and listen to opinions and criticisms from both the public and the Councillors. Probably because all honest advice is unpleasant to the ear, the authorities often view dissident opinions and criticisms as 'opposition to the Urban Services Department' or 'objection to all measures initiated by the Urban Services Department'. Actually this kind of emperor mentality of the feudal age should be discarded. If we hold on to this kind of mentality, the streets will never be clean. The 'street cleansing' politics may cast some light on the future of Hong Kong.
Finally, I wish to touch on the list of Members of the Preparatory Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region endorsed by the National People's Congress Standing Committee. Differential treatment is shown on the list (it gives too much weight to the industrial and commercial sectors while excluding dissidents. Evils of the appointment system are fully demonstrated. The appointment system only reflects the wishes of those in power but not the aspirations of the people. If the composition of the future Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government also gives that much weight to the industrial and commercial sectors and excludes dissidents, with no mechanism to counter balance it, the future government will surely move towards corruption. Interests of the lower and middle classes will be neglected which will consequently sharpen the contradictions among classes, leading to social instability. What is even worse is that, there are rumours that a number of appointed seats will be reinstated in Councils and Boards at district level. That such tactics employed by the colonial government to suppress public opinions and control the Councils and Boards will be re-employed after China resumes sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 may well be described as a retrogression in the evolution of human civilization. It will be a joke in the history of the Third World Nations' struggles against colonial rule.
MR. KAM NAI-WAI (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, in reviewing the activities of the Libraries Select Committee over the past few years in the capacity of the spokesman of the Democratic Party on library policies, I would like to point out
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