XN000022-1996-02-14 — Page 39

37

Government departments to bear own postal cost

Following is a question by the Hon Elizabeth Wong Chien Chi-lien and a written reply by the Secretary for Economic Services, Mr Gordon Siu, in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday);

Question:

Will the Government inform this Council:

(a) whether government departments will be required to stamp all letters sent out as from 1 April this year; if so, whether the new arrangement will cause extra work to government departments;

(b) if the answer to (a) is in the affirmative, will the Government provide a breakdown by department of the estimated increase in expenditure on staff cost in the financial year 1996/97 arising from the introduction of the arrangement mentioned in (a) above?

Reply:

(a) Government departments are required to pay individually for their own postage with effect from 1 April 1996 under the Post Office Trading Fund operation. The purpose is to reflect the true cost of the postal service used by government departments and to introduce a financial discipline on them to economise on the use of such services. This, however, does not mean that they have to affix stamps to every letter they send. Same as for the private sector, apart from using stamps to pay for postage, government departments can use franking machines to frank postage or post letters vide the Prepayment In Money or Permit Mailing systems. These arrangements, which are designed to meet the needs of business and bulk posters, obviate the need for affixing stamps.

(b) Given the availability of alternative means for paying postage, we envisage that only a very small proportion of letters sent by government departments would need to be affixed with stamps. The workload involved would be minimal and can be coped with by existing staff of all departments.

End