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PROVISIONAL Urban Council
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towards a more sophisticated direction. The major weakness of this recent consultation document is that all four options point to power cutting, not providing channels to encourage public participation in developing a district structure.
All four options set out to cut power. Space for councillors to act as policy makers will be reduced and reverted to government officers under the premise of recalling the function of public hygiene. Of course, an executive-led government may not be happy to have policies formulated by people not of their own, or those not entirely under their control. Several weeks ago, when the Housing Authority was still dragging the issue of 30% across the board market rental cut, the two municipal councils made a decisive move to ease difficulties for the public. I can see that Government was displeased.
There is at present an opening in the executive-led government structure on issues of environmental hygiene, culture, entertainment and recreation, allowing elected councils to formulate policies. I think that instead of closing this opening in the review, it should be enlarged. However, we can gather from public opinion that the image of this Council is not good and things have not been done properly. What has gone wrong? I hope we can study it with open minds during the review. Can it be the ambiguous relationship between the Urban Council and the Urban Services Department (USD) that makes us unable to fulfil our duties? We have ministers in name but not in reality. It is indeed a failure.
The Liberal Party has started preliminary discussions on the Consultation Document on Review of District Organisations. We feel that in the long run, we want to see streamlining of the two-tier structure, but then within the transitional period, we can accept the One Council and One Department principle. However, we would like the One Council One Department option to be arranged under the following premise:
1. Abolition of appointed and ex-officio seats;
2. Staff establishment should be streamlined on merging of the existing two departments so as to increase efficiency and draw in professionals. Under the existing system which does not allow for entrance to the middle of grades, we cannot attract professionals to work on public hygiene, environmental protection, culture or sports;
3. Abolition of the Memorandum of Administrative Arrangement upon merging into One Council and One Department. The Memorandum restricts our procurement from the market of cost-effective services, such as those provided by the Architectural Services Department or Electrical and Mechanical Services Department. We should take advantage of the opportunity to do away with the Memorandum so that members of the public will have more choices;
4. We should reshape our image of having many factions and delegate more power to district boards. In some areas, the work of district
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Page 86 of 606