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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
The costs of the Training School are shared in accordance with the establishment ratio as at 1 April each year. The costs of career exhibition are shared equally between the two Councils.
The answer to part (v) of the question is that the department is about to commence discussion with the Regional Services Department in connection with the sharing of costs for common services. The Council will be kept informed about the result of these discussions.
MISS ADA WONG YING-KAY (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman, I can see co-operation with the Regional Council to provide joint services in many respects. I support this. However, I can see there are big differences in the bases for determining the sharing ratio, particularly the Hygiene Division under the Department of Health which carries out the territory-wide activity of examining food hygiene and testing for contaminated vegetables. As the basis for sharing cost in this regard is based on establishment ratio, it fails to reflect the demand of work and service. The population ratio of the urban area to the N.T. is currently at 54:46. I would like to ask Mr. CHIANG the following concrete questions:
(1) When will a review of the sharing basis be carried out with the Regional Services Department?
(2) As to the sharing basis, have we formulated a stand of our own? What basis should we adopt?
(3) Are we going to adopt a clear-cut basis so as to unify the sharing basis for all the above-mentioned services?
(4) Lastly, I want to ask about figures. From Annex I(b) of the reply, I can see that population ratio has been taken as the sharing basis by the Music Office, and for item (e), i.e. in sponsoring local sports associations to organize territory-wide sports events, population ratio is again taken as the sharing basis. There is a big difference in the ratios given for the 2 items, with that of the Music Office at 54%:46% and that for sponsoring events at 65%:35%. I just want to ask why there is a big difference when both cases take population ratio as the sharing basis?
MR. CHIANG SAI-CHEONG (in Cantonese):—About Miss WONG's questions, I also hope to raise them at the Finance Select Committee of the Urban Council as soon as possible so that we can negotiate with the Regional Council for a consensus on how to proceed in accordance with the code.
As regards making population ratio the sharing basis for costs of the Music Office and the sponsoring of local associations to organize territory-wide sports events, in fact, the Council took over the Music Office less than a year ago. In the past, the sharing of cost in respect of the Music Office was based on the population distribution. Hence, there might have been some discrepancies in the figures; as for the sharing ratio for sponsoring local associations to organize territory-wide sports events, all along, the two Municipal Councils and all our national sports associations have been aware
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