TNAG-1735-FCO40-2448-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1988 — Page 153

HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 18 May 1988

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SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AND WELFARE: No, Sir, the procedure is that the vehicles are called up for the first time. If they do not meet the standards on this occasion, they are told to go away and carry out work to rectify the problem, and they may be called back several times to see whether the problem has been rectified. In due course if it has not been rectified, the Commissioner for Transport can be asked to consider cancelling the registration of the vehicle but there is no question of a fixed penalty ticket being issued.

MR. PETER POON: Sir, if I heard the Secretary for Health and Welfare correctly, he just mentioned that the examination centre is only half-staffed. If it is going to carry out efficiently the work to stamp out these sort of emissions, he has to recruit more staff. Can he inform this Council how long will it be before the centre is fully operational?

SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AND WELFARE: I hope that the centre will be fully staffed within the next three months.

MR. EDWARD Ho: Sir, would the Secretary inform this Council whether using appointed spotters and police officers rather than organised duty officers is effective and whether it would be subject to abuse? If 90 per cent of the spotted vehicles subsequently pass the test, does it mean that these vehicles have been subject to arbitrary information leading to unnecessary waste of time and in certain cases, loss in income on the part of professional drivers?

SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AND WELFARE: Sir, as far as I know we have not yet had any complaints that vehicles have been called up unnecessarily. We think that the fact that most of the vehicles pass the test means that after they have been notified they do take action to have the defects in the vehicles corrected.

MRS. CHOW: Sir, will the Government consider publicising extensively the telephone number to which complaints relating to vehicle emissions can be directed to encourage the public's co-operation in reporting problem vehicles?

SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AND WELFARE: Yes, I think we would hesitate to publicise the number so that the general public could call in and report smoky vehicles. There then, I think, might be a danger of abuse and malicious calls and so on. We did consider this but we decided it was better to go for selected spotters as we call them who would be people that we hoped can be trusted to report only genuine cases of smoky vehicles.

Written answer to question

Public hospital charges for visitors

9. DR. LAM asked: Will Government inform this Council whether there is a difference in public hospital charges for Hong Kong citizens and visitors; if so,