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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

SECRETARY FOR HOME AFFAIRS: - Mr. Chairman, I should first like to talk about Mr. Henry Hu's suggestions for dealing with complaints and grievances. He sketched out how a two-tiered system for dealing with complaints might work and my main criticism is that it sounds too tidy, almost bureaucratic. Life is not so simple. By far the majority of complaints, grievances, queries, and personal problems relating to dealings with the Government are dealt with directly between the people and the officials in the departments concerned. Thank goodness they are, because if they were not, our C.D.O.s, Unofficial Members in their Ward Offices, UMELCO, and all the rest would be swamped. Nevertheless, some people want to go somewhere else, and it is these that Mr. Hu's tiered system would be for. The trouble about a tiered system is that to get to the top would involve such a laborious climb, and the tiers of C.D.O.s, Ward Members, and UMELCO are not even tiers in the same organization. If a man simply wants to find his way through some bit of the Government machine, he had best come to the C.D.O. Mr. Hu says we have no teeth, but we have tongues, and we use sweet reason or occasionally less sweet raging as our tools. But C.D.O.s are not Chairmen of Select Committees of this Council, and if someone wants to get at this Council, he is much better to do so through a Member. If a man wants a question asked in Legislative Council or an Adjournment Debate there, then he would be wasting his time in a City District Office or a Ward Office. UMELCO is the place he should go to.

In one sense, C.D.O.s, the Ward system, and UMELCO are trying to do the same thing - that is, to help ordinary people with problems they encounter in dealing with Government organizations. The similarity ends there. Our functions in the machine of Government are different, and we go about our work in different ways. I think it would cause much confusion and create many unnecessary problems of jurisdiction if an attempt was made to combine all these organizations into one.

For years, the Secretary for Home Affairs has had, during this debate, to defend the stand taken by the Government on problems of managing multi-storey buildings, but the subject was mentioned only briefly by two Members this year. Whenever problems arise through thoughtless or inconsiderate behaviour of people to their neighbours, it is tempting to say that the Government should grab a big stick and beat sense into everyone. We take a different view, and for a Member who denounces the Government in extravagant terms like "police-state" to press for anything like the old compulsory house cleansing routine passes comprehension. Today, we expect people to be able to look after their own homes. Multi-storey buildings have created new problems, and after a great deal of difficult work, it has been possible to produce new legislation to enable house owners more easily to form corporations to manage buildings they jointly own.

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corporations to manage buildings they jointly own. I think it is a measure of the success of the draftsmen's skill that it is now possible for owners of flats with no professional legal assistance at all to get together to form legal corporations endowed with powers to run buildings and recover costs, even if some of the flat owners refuse to co-operate. Furthermore, they can do it without going outside their own districts, even if they live in the parts of town where there are no lawyers' offices. The simple procedures can be explained by C.D.O.s who have, in conjunction with the Registrar General, prepared guides and check lists so that what used to be a costly legal operation before is now do-it-yourself corporation formation. Mr. CHEONG-LEEN urged us to a continuing effort. No urging is necessary. We are hard at it. The new law has only been on the statute books since June, but already 36 corporations have been formed. As we become better at explaining the procedures and as more people realize the advantages of the new corporations, I am sure progress will continue.

Mr. KAN referred to the numbering of floors and the maddening way in which people use these numbers. He only mentioned the Chinese way, which is the same as the American, and the British way. By the time you take in mezzanine floors and look out for superstitious buildings which do not have a 13th floor, the ordinary citizen may well be in a whirl. This is a matter in which we are increasingly in the hands of the people who number the buttons in lifts. If they use only one number for each floor - preferably showing Chinese and Arabic numerals - there can be no confusion. This will come slowly, but there is no authority which can compel people to number floors in any particular way. The Commissioner of Rating and Valuation has authority under the Buildings Ordinance to number buildings but not floors in the urban areas. He uses the British numbering for all his records. I am afraid I cannot produce or promise a solution to this tricky problem today, but I am pleased to be able to say that the Commissioner of Rating and Valuation is discussing the practical difficulties of standardization with other departments. They are not quite as straightforward as Mr. KAN suggests.

Three Members mentioned the question of Chinese as an official language. I have carefully copied out the relevant passages in these speeches and posted them to the Secretary of the Committee looking into the whole question of Chinese in public business. Of course, he may have made the extracts himself, but really, this is a pretty inefficient way of getting things done. I hope Members who are concerned about this will take the trouble to explain their views at length to the Committee and talk about their ideas with the Committee. The Committee is prepared to meet people, but if people will not go to them, the Committee will find it much more difficult to learn of people's views. The Government has great sympathy with much of the public thinking on

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