HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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how long an applicant has to wait before being informed of the outcome of his/her application? How does this deviate from the department's performance pledge?
(3) What is the rationale for putting the statement 'I clearly understand that the UC has the discretion to withdraw the telephone booking services with or without giving reasons' on the registration form?
Ms. GRACE AU YUK-HAR, VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE RECREATION SELECT COMMITTEE, replied as follows (in Cantonese):—The question consists of three parts. The first part asks when will the telephone reservation service under the SPORTIX System be put into operation. In fact, the registration service of telephone users of SPORTIX was introduced in July 1992.
The second part asks for up-to-date figures on the number of telephone-user registration forms which have been received, approved and rejected by the Department and the processing time and how does this deviate from the Department's performance pledge. Up to the end of March 1996, there were more than 86,000 registration forms received, all the valid registration forms were approved and no eligible applicant was rejected. As the inflow of registration forms is erratic in nature, no performance pledge has been made on the processing time. However, the Department endeavours to process an application for registration within eight working days, although during the early implementation period of SPORTIX Phase II, it occasionally took longer than that.
The third part of the question is about the rationale for putting the statement 'I fully understand that the Urban Council has the discretion to withdraw this telephone booking service with or without giving reasons' on the application form. All registered SPORTIX telephone users are required to observe a set of conditions while using the Council's SPORTIX telephone reservation service. For example, Condition 8 stipulates that the user is required to confirm the reservation by payment of the relevant hire charges within three days, otherwise the reservation will be automatically released for booking by others. Condition 9 stipulates that if the user fails to confirm the telephone reservations for more than two occasions within a period of 60 consecutive days, the convenience of the telephone reservation service given to him will be automatically withdrawn. The inclusion of these conditions is to facilitate the better management and control of the use of the telephone reservation service. It acts as a deterrent to prevent the abuse of service by those unco-operative users. It only serves as the last resort. In fact, since the introduction of the telephone reservation service in July 1992, there has not been any case of withdrawal of service.
MR. FRANCIS TANG CHI-HO (in Cantonese):—Concerning part one of my question, the reply says that the telephone users registration service was implemented in July 1992. Why is it that the service was only extended to the
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