HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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termination of contract. As regards street cleansing, staff of the Department together with Urban Councillors and District Board Members of the districts concerned will conduct regular visits to the districts where street cleansing services are contracted out, and make suggestions for improvement. As to the cleaning of markets, Urban Councillors, District Board Members and representatives of market stall operators can reflect their views through the Market Consultative Committee. The performance of each contractor will be kept in record which will be used as the main reference material for evaluating their tender in future.
At present, the quality of services contracted out can, in general, meet the standard required by the Department.
The second part of the question asks how the Council would continue the provision of services if a contractor is unable to fulfill the contract.
In emergency cases, the Department could either hire another contractor through direct purchase arrangement or redeploy manpower within the Department to provide the services within a short time. Taking street cleansing for instance, 1/3 of each district's street cleansing work is contracted out to cleansing contractors which provide manual street cleansing services, while the rest of the streets are cleaned by the Department. In case any contractor fails to fulfill the contract, the Council could provide emergency service until a new contract is awarded to another contractor.
The third part of the question asks how much the Council could save in terms of financial expenses and human resources for contracting out the municipal services.
Basing on the figures of 96/97, it is estimated that the Council could save about $288 million annually for contracting out the various services mentioned above.
The fourth part of the question asks whether the Council will review this policy and whether any new items will be contracted out in future.
Various branches of the Department have a mechanism for monitoring the services of the contractors. They will also review the contracting-out arrangements and evaluate their effectiveness regularly, and assess the suitability of other new items for contracting out.
At the moment, the Department has no specific plan to contract out additional items of municipal services apart from those mentioned above. Should there be any new proposals, the Department will submit them to the relevant Select Committee for consideration.
MR. SAN Stephen Wong Hon-CHING (in Cantonese):—I have several follow-up questions. One of them concerns part 3 of the question. In the reply document, only savings in terms of finance were mentioned, none in respect of manpower.
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