Sessional_Paper_1932 — Page 48

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result of amendment and re-amendment, with the additional difficulty that departments such as the Medical and Fire Brigade would, under cover of vague phraseology in the Ordinance, stipulate for fulfilment of somewhat fantastic requirements before they would consent to a plan being passed. The remedy for both these evils is the same. The complete re-drafting of the Buildings Ordinance. A special Committee, on which should be representatives of leading local firms of architects, should be appointed for the work. There might well be incorporated in the revised ordinance provisions for payment of a fee for passing a plan, and of penalty fees in the case of incorrectly drawn up plans. Power' should also be given to the Governor in Council to censure an architect who erects a faultily constructed building, and to suspend or remove his name from the list of Authorised Architects in the event of his repeating the offence. The requirements of the Medical and Fire authorities should be clearly set forth, so that there would be no ambiguity. Thereafter the Director of Public Works, as Building Authority, would decide whether those requirements had been complied with or not.

18. The same or a similar Committee might also go into the question of contracting and sub-contracting: As many witnesses have said, it is the sub-contracting system as it exists in Hong Kong, that is responsible for 'so much shoddy building. The law should, if possible, he tightened up considerably in this respect, and modern methods enforced to the exclusion of the obsolete and dangerous ones now prevailing.

19. For the present the Commissioners do not consider that the large staff of six engineers and ten overseers in the Buildings Ordinance Office can be cut down. When there is a new ordinance the staff can be reduced. It is essential that the revision should not be delayed.

20. The Architectural and Buildings Ordinance Ofices should be considered as one office for the purpose of circulation of staff. The heads of both should be fully qualified architects. The title 'architect' might well be substituted for that of 'engineer' in the case of senior officers of these sub-departments. Such a nomenclature would be more in accordance with reality, or what should be reality.

21. It has already been stated that the existing General Works Office should be abolished and its work split up amongst other sub-departments. With minor building construction handed over to the Architectural Office there is left drainage, road construc- tion and miscellaneous works. The former should be taken over by the present Drainage Office; roads construction by the present Roads Maintenance Office. The present division of roads work into two separate sub-departments is ludicrous, especially when it is realised that the surfacing of a new road is done by the maintenance and not by the constructional (i.e., General Works) Office, with the result that road construction estimates are mislead- ing. The regrouping proposals of the Commissioners do not stop here. They advocate the amalgamation of the enlarged Roads and Drainage offices into one sub-department. This combined sub-department, which might well take the title of 'General Works' Office, should take over the execution of miscellaneous works, which fell to the present General Works Office. The work of the Roads and Drainage offices is so closely allied that the placing of it under one head should have good results. It will be necessary to retain an engineer in charge of each of the old sub-departments, but their positions will not be of such respon- sibility as that of the present executive engineers. They will simply be engineers of some seniority, with the executive engineer of the combined sub-department responsible for the whole.

22. None of the personnel of the existing General Works Office should be taken over by the new combined sub-department; it should be disposed of by termination of employ- ment or absorbtion elsewhere into the Public Works Department as vacancies occur. Con- structional work by the Public Works Department will for the next few years be negligible; on the other hand maintenance work will have to continue. The proposal amounts in effect to a reduction in the Roads and Drainage offices.

23. There is included in the Roads sub-department, staff to carry out repairs to Government vehicles at the motor repair shop at Wanchai. This shop undertakes not only minor repairs but major ones as well. This is a bad case of duplication, for at the Railway workshops at Hunghom there is of necessity a far larger workshop, which, apart from raiÏ- way works, repairs Government motor vehicles. There is not a sufficiently large number of