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and traders will have more confidence in the prospect of stalls. At the same time, the manpower and resources saved from privatisation can be applied on coordinating market management and enforcement of the law. For example, we can step up the prosecution of illegal hawking activities within and outside markets and thereby improve the overall management quality and competitiveness of UC markets.
I suggest we implement privatisation at newly built markets on a trial basis. This avoids unnecessary resistance from tenants and any problems arising out of the re-ordering of USD management staff. During the trial exercise, policies towards tenants including rent and rental conditions should remain unchanged. The relationship between the management company and the market management consultative committee should be maintained as that between our present management staff and the committee. We should continue to collect proposals for improvement. After a trial period of, say, six months, a review should be carried out to consider whether or not to further extend privatisation to other markets.
The longer term target of this plan will be to contract out the management of one-third of the Council's markets to private companies. The experience gathered from the trial can be applied to the management of different markets so that our markets can be run more effectively. In the long term, I urge the Department to study the feasibility of contracting out some of the Council's markets to private managers. The experience of privatisation of markets run by the Housing Authority shows that it can make effective and flexible use of market economy. In other words, the managers of markets contracted out try out different marketing tactics in order to increase profit. That development will on the whole increase the cost effectiveness of our markets. However, the principle of protecting tenants' interests and handling the hawker problem should remain. Here, I would like to ask Members to support the motion as a way to solve the many problems seen in UC markets. Thank you.
MR. STANLEY NG WING-FAI (in Cantonese): I second the motion.
CHAIRMAN (in Cantonese): Members will now speak. I myself am also going to speak on the motion.
The purpose of constructing public market complexes is to resite on-street hawkers and improve environmental hygiene in districts. If we resite eligible hawkers to continue their operation in newly built markets and the markets are managed by private companies as profit making bodies, I am worried that they might run the markets as commercial enterprises to rake in profit. Commercial decisions by private companies in respect of rent, types of goods and the selection of tenants may differ very much from arrangements made by the Urban Council. Their decisions might meet the objection of existing market traders. So, to me, Mr. LEE's proposal will not increase the competitiveness of UC markets. I must point out that the choice of private companies on tenants
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