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HONG KONG PROVISIONAL URBAN COUNCIL
Mr. Albert Lai Wing-lin (in Cantonese):- Mr. Chairman, the lyrics of a song sung by Samuel Hui say, 'One just does anything to be fed.' Mr. CHIANG's motion amply reflects the imploration.
Large commercial advertisements on the inner and outer facades of the Council's buildings definitely would generate proceeds of more than $100m a year. Just close our eyes and imagine what the most suitable kind of advertisement would be on the slightly curved external facade of the Cultural Centre in Tsimshatsui. Advertisements on this facade could bring the Council an annual revenue of more than $10m, because they can be seen from both Kowloon and the Hong Kong Island.
In fact, both Mr. CHIANG's original motion and Mr. To's amended one could be more specific. We might as well commission an advertising agent to take care of all the advertisements on all the buildings of the Council in Hong Kong, including the Space Museum, the various museums, the City Hall, the libraries, the swimming pools, the Arts Centre, the Coliseum, the markets, large and small parks and the Hong Kong Cultural Centre mentioned above. And then we could work out the percentage of annual advertisement proceeds in our revenue, or the hundreds of millions of dollars we would make. The Council owns more than a thousand vehicles. If we still failed to make both ends meet, we could place advertisements on the vehicles as well, including even UCI (if the Chairman does not mind riding on it). I am sure there are advertisers ready to pay $10,000 to $20,000 a month for placing an advertisement on it. And then we have more than 17,000 employees. We could ask them to put on hats with advertisements on them and I am sure we could get another several hundred thousand dollars every month. They have to wear these hats, be they of the high or low ranks. I am sure that all these would generate large income for the Council.
Must the Council be degraded to such an extent? Take a look at the hotels in Hong Kong. Their primary concern is to make money and acting on the commercial principle, they naturally assume money-making as their objective, but would Members take a look? Do we find any advertisements on their external facades? It would be an excellent idea to place advertisements on the towering facades of the Peninsula Hotel, but they didn't do it. Why? And then the banks in Hong Kong. Be they small or big ones, they place no advertisements on their facades either. If the Hongkong Bank placed advertisements on its external facades, the proceeds must be extremely handsome. Why didn't they do this? We don't see any advertisements on high-class residential buildings either.
As the executive arm of the Urban Council, the Urban Services Department is one of the Government departments. If we allowed our buildings to carry advertisements, all the Government departments might do the same thing for their buildings, and the revenue would grow tremendously, which would bring about a lot of benefits. As to the argument that the Council can select the right
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