HONG KONG PROVISIONAL URBAN COUNCIL
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Corporation (LDC). These projects cover some sites which are within the jurisdiction of the Urban Council and have also been proposed for the provision of the new Central Market. I suggest that the Urban Council should move towards the direction of cooperating with other organisations, including the LDC, to strive for the early redevelopment of the Central Market. This would not only meet the need of residents in the Central District but also that of the whole community.
The second point I would like to raise is library services. I took a look at a copy of information tabled by the Chairman when I arrived just now. It is likely that his speech will also mention the improvement in library services in the past year, including telephone renewal of library materials, the browsing of catalogues on Internet and the extension of opening hours of some small libraries. I believe that our colleagues have made much effort in the above services over the past few years. However, these services can in no way meet the need of members of the public. It has been more than two years now, and what we have managed to do is to extend the library opening hours for an hour during lunch time only. The public will certainly find the Urban Council ridiculous if they learn that it took more than 2 years for the Council to achieve this. What's the point of spending so much time in discussion? I very much hope that more effort will be made in extending the library service hours without further delay. It is also my wish that the measure of extending the library opening hours on Sunday afternoon will be implemented as early as possible.
I would like to stress that staff development will be our major task in the coming year because I witnessed the low morale of quite a number of library staff—I mean some and not all of them. By what means can high quality services be provided? I have heard in this Debate some Councillors talking about ways to work out a comprehensive code of high quality management to promote a customer-oriented service concept. I believe that planning for staff development, including enhancement of their professional competency, will be the major concern of Council libraries in future.
In the past year, everybody talked about the Central Library. I hope that the incident will make Councillors realize the importance of public participation in capital projects, and I believe something should be done to achieve this goal. In the recent discussion on the Museum of Contemporary Art, we have repeated the same mistake of depriving the public of participation. I really hope that this is the last time and that the Council will let the public have a say in future capital projects. I now call on the public to voice their views on the design of or services to be provided in the Central Library as early as possible, so that the Council can take appropriate action to meet their needs. The Central Library is a rare example of capital projects for which public views are consulted. However, it has still caused much controversy. The Council should draw a lesson from this incident and do better in future.
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