HONG KONG PROVISIONAL URBAN COUNCIL
307
'The Provisional Urban Council and the Provisional Regional Council play an important role in providing municipal services to residents of the urban area and the New Territories respectively. However, past experience shows that there is room for improvement in the exchanges, cooperation and coordination in regard to the two Councils' formulation of policy, enactment and enforcement of legislation, allocation of resources etc. In view of this, RESOLVED that the Council should review the present situation as early as possible and set up an established system to more effectively strengthen the communication and cooperation of the two Councils.'
He said (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman and Members, the last question that we spent much time in discussing has fully reflected the reason for my moving the motion for debate, that is, a lot of communication has to be made between the two Municipal Councils on a number of issues in order to solve jointly the problems related to the provision of services to the public.
In particular, it is known to everyone that the Urban Council has been established for a long time and is the first official organization in Hong Kong with elected members, a pioneer in Hong Kong's democracy. It has played a very important role in the building of and planning for Hong Kong affairs on behalf of the people of Hong Kong. And I believe that every Member who has taken part in the work of the Urban Council takes pride in this.
Time is moving ahead; Hong Kong society is also continuously changing for the better. It is a very different setting from that 24 years ago when the Urban Council was just made a financially autonomous body independent of the Government. Even when compared with the situation prevailing at the last Urban Council election, there have been great changes. Unfortunately, no review or reform has been made by the Government in response to these changes in respect of either the Urban Council or Provisional Urban Council. As a result, there are now criticisms that our district administration, which naturally include the Provisional Urban Council, are superfluous and inefficient.
At last, the Chief Executive, in the policy address released last week, mentioned the need to take a fresh look at the existing organizations of the two Municipal Councils and District Boards, so as to decide whether the present structure can continue to ensure the efficient and responsive delivery of services to our evolving community. This offers us an opportunity to make a review to find out what actually goes wrong in the cooperation and communication between the Provisional Urban Council and Provisional Regional Council.
Although both the Urban Council and Regional Council have been established for more than 10 years, cooperation and communication between the Provisional Urban Council and Provisional Regional Council (the two
Page 310 of 654
Page 310 of 654
Page 310 of 654
Page 310Page 311