TNAG-1606-FCO40-22121-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1987 — Page 248

Supplementary to Question No. 5.

LegCo meeting on 11.3.87.

MR. TAI: Sir, I have two supplementary questions.

and

They

are a bit long I.hope you can bear with me for a couple of

minutes. Sir, my first supplementary is; in view of the

present sanitation and sewerage system in the rural area, which

is highly unsatisfactory, and bearing in mind there are about

with 600 villages in the New Territories, the average provision for

each village at about $25,000 а year, could the

Secretary inform this Council how he could tackle the problem of

improvement to the sewerage and sanitary system,

bearing in mind that funds

voted are inadequate?

My second question is;

the

access

roads

to

villages built

over twenty

years

ago require

However,

these roads

were

urgent maintenance.

built on private land albeit with government funds. Recently the

Government refused to provide funds for its maintenance for the

reason that consent of the land owners was required. Could the

Secretary inform this Council how this problem can be tackled

so that the badly needed maintenance can be carried out ?

HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT:

I think the second question, Mr. TAI,

doesn't follow naturally from the first but could the Secretary

give a reply to the first supplementary?

SECRETARY FOR LANDS AND WORKS: Sir, I took it from Mr. TAI's

that

first question he was comparing the relative expenditure

of new towns and rural areas and, of course, I doubt if that

would be a sort of very satisfactory standard for comparison

bearing in mind that the new towns' expenditure includes a