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PROVISIONAL URBAN COUNCIL
MR. WONG KWOK-HING (in Cantonese):-I wish to ask the Chairman of the Select Committee a question. Will the review cover effective management which is an integral part? The reason is that simply monitoring the staff's time of arrival and departure is not necessarily a good management practice. Take for instance a worker is instructed to clean a street six times. Does it mean he could get off as soon as he finishes cleaning the street six times as instructed? Accordingly, can management of staff efficiency be considered? The staff must be made to achieve efficiency at work, enhanced productivity, etc. May I ask the Chairman of the Select Committee whether the review will cover these areas?
Mr. SUEN KAI-CHEONG (in Cantonese):-I could tell Mr. Wong Kwok-hing that the review will be a comprehensive one. As far as management of staff efficiency is concerned, there is already such an arrangement in place in the Department, but performance may vary among grades. About the example of street-cleaning quoted by Mr. WONG Kwok-hing just now, in fact the cleaning services for one third of the streets under the Council have been contracted out. According to the terms of the contracts, the frequency of cleaning is stipulated with reasonable intervals. Under such circumstances, the way of treatment differs from that of the civil service. In other words, supervision is already in place at present, but of course we can still conduct a comprehensive review.
MR. MOK YING-FAN (in Cantonese):-The Audit Commission's recent report points out that a number of Government departments have a lot of problems in the supervision of their staff of different levels. The USD is one of the Government departments (apart from the Housing Department) with the greatest number of redundant civil servants. From part 3 of the written reply, I can see that according to the Chairman of the Administration Select Committee, the Department is now conducting a review and has reminded the heads of all branches to ensure strict observation of the relevant USD internal instructions and guidelines by their subordinates. I consider this to be inadequate. May I ask the Chairman of the Administration Select Committee whether he would, at the meetings of the Select Committee, consider requesting the Department to prepare a paper on the subject matter for Members' discussion and re-examination of the effectiveness of the existing mechanism for the supervision of staff of different levels? Is there really a need for such discussions? Would the Chairman of the Select Committee please answer this?
MR. SUEN KAI-CHEONG (in Cantonese):-Such discussions are possible. But if the 16,000-plus staff-members of the Department of different grades were to be reviewed at the same time, it might not be possible to take any immediate follow-up action. At present, there are about 10,000 staff-members of the Department carrying out field duties of various levels. As far as supervision and inspection of field staff are concerned, I could ask the Department to submit a paper for discussion by the Administration Select Committee.
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