HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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was supported by Members. Today's motion only reaffirms the objectives on sports and recreation,
As mentioned by Mr. CHAN just now, we do have a Five Year Plan on recreational facilities. However, do we have major policies or objectives about recreational and sports development? In fact, Members may think that sports and culture are totally unrelated, but there are some similarities with regard to the work of UC. For example, venues and programmes play a leading role in organising cultural activities; in recreational and sports activities, the construction of venues and the organisation of programmes of various scales and training courses also play a leading role. In fact, we have organised such activities many times. Recreation and sports is one of the major services provided by the Urban Council. The Recreation Select Committee ranks second among all Select Committees in the amount of resources allocated, only after the Public Health Select Committee.
In 1996/97, the budgeted expenditure for recreation and sports is $1.3 billion. However, I can see that with this large sum of money, not much would be spent on development, less than one-tenth of the resources allocated for construction and maintenance. Venue is an important facility, without venues, it would be very difficult for the Council to develop sports activities. Even Hong Kong Sports Development Board and various sports associations have to use our venues for training. However, the most urgent task in the meantime is to conduct a comprehensive review to see whether the venues can cope with developments of larger scale.
Mr. Chairman, in 1994 when Hong Kong Sports Development Board laid down its policy, we did reaffirm some objectives in sports, including 'Sports-for-All', development of sport activities at district level and the maintenance and provision of sports facilities to the public. But as we can see, our implementation of the 'Sports-for-All' concept is only limited to the organisation of the Corporate Games, Masters Games, Fitness Gold Card Scheme and Senior Citizens Recreation and Sports Fortnight, etc. In terms of quantity, we have done quite a lot indeed and we can take pride in the high participation rate. However, I also support Ms. Grace Au's motion because quantity does not mean everything. We also have to attach importance to the quality of our work and our objective in respect of the direction of policy development.
To cope with the Five Year Plan of the Sports Development Board, a working group was set up in July/August 95 to review the relationship between the Urban Council and the Sports Development Board in respect of sports and recreation development. I was a Member of the Working Group and had learnt a lot from it. Hence, I think that we should pursue the work in sports development at the basic level.
Mr. Chairman, I really hope that a working group will be set up in the near future to: firstly, collect public's opinions on Ms. Grace Au's motion and get
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