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interest of the hard working staff since they will be rewarded for their good efforts.
It will be worth canvassing, for instance, if a prescribed proportion of savings between actual and expected payroll arising from enhanced productivity can be assigned for distribution among employees of a given section, division, occupational grade, department or whatever unit considered appropriate. This will not only help to place the linkage between performance and reward on a less bizarre footing but also serves as a powerful incentive in motivating employees. The productivity-related premium derived from labour cost savings can be entitled 'productivity bonus'. Regardless of the name, such a concept merits serious consideration in principle.
The Urban Services Department has on its establishment a multitude of staff grades as many as 123. Like their fellow colleagues working in other departments, they are equally susceptible to disputes regarding pay, structure and relativity. The Urban Council is deeply concerned with measures to provide them a fair deal at work. Nevertheless, equity and justice for them cannot be achieved in isolation but must be consistent with similar considerations for the public at large. Such consistency, I would say, will be heavily conditional upon the basic criteria of efficiency, output and performance which have not been stressed with sufficient vigour as past experience of salary and structure administration shows. It may be opportune for us now to spend some time pulling together this fragile structure into a more rational and coherent system.
I support the motion before Council.
MR STEPHEN M. L. LAU (in Cantonese):-Mr Chairman, many of my fellow Councillors have spoken just now and on the day before yesterday. I just want to add a point or two. The actual staff salaries which the Council had to pay for the year 1978-79 were approximately $300 million, while the estimate for 1979-80 is close to $370 million. The amount will still increase incessantly as the Council's services are expanding, and it will take up 60% of the total expenditure for the coming year. On the other hand, of the total revenue of $500 million, $390 million is from rates representing 78% of our revenue. In other words, the revenue from rates is just enough to pay the staff salaries. Should anything happen, the Council would have to resort to the sprinkling income from licence fees. When that time comes, the Council's services to the community will be seriously threatened. As it has been six years since the Council gained financial autonomy, it should not only be able to appropriate its funds independently, but should have the ability to maintain a balanced budget on its own and to ensure that the community gets its money's worth of service. The Council should not merely provide additional services, it should also practically satisfy the basic needs of the people and serve the interest of the general public.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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191
The Council has at present a staff of about 16,000, most of them being manual labourers. Staff is required to work day and night without stop, doing cleansing work, slaughtering pigs and cattle and carrying out other duties. Recently, Mr Chairman announced that in the next few years more projects will be completed and more various services and facilities will be offered to the public. The provision of these recreational, cultural and educational facilities will call for the employment of a large number of supervisory staff and the provision of technical as well as management training. Although the Council has the Establishment Select Committee to attend to personnel matters, it has not yet thoroughly understood the problems or fully analysed the following points:
1. While planning a project, the Council should first make an estimate of the cost including staff salaries and training expenses.
2. For each project, have we first of all made a feasibility study of adopting automation to cover labour shortage as there will be different estimates in the design and construction work?
3. Has the Council laid down any condition on the number of years that an officer who has undergone overseas specialized skill training is required to work for the Council upon his return so that the Council would not be blamed for wasting money?
The efficiency of the Council's staff should be compared to that of other organizations and kept under constant review in an effort to raise the quality of the Council's services and to reduce the cost and expenses for overtime work.
Since the Council attaches importance to the principle of operating on a more commercialized financial basis, it should make full use of the functions of its various sub-committees. With the exception of some which are purely for the purpose of rendering services to the public and therefore cannot be self-sufficient, the Council should try its best to operate all the others in the following business-like manner:
1. According to an unofficial estimate, the number of hawkers in Hong Kong at present is approximately over 100,000. Apart from some 30,000 who are licensed, over 70,000 are professional or amateur hawkers operating in the streets in various districts. They are seriously affecting the business of shops on both sides of the street, obstructing the traffic as well as causing environmental and health hazards. Not only is the Council unable to find a way to improve the situation, it has to come up with a subsidy of $30 million a year. If it takes 3 to 5 years to solve the problem, the taxpayers would have to shoulder a $150 million expenditure. Are we doing it for charity or are we doing it in the interest of the public? Looking at the problem from another angle, if each and every hawker occupies 50 sq. ft of the street, a total of 5,000,000 sq. ft of public land would be occupied by them. If rent is collected at a rate equivalent to half of that for the general ground-floor units in shopping centres (ie $4 per sq. ft), the annual rental would be $240 million. If rent is collected at a
Page 115 of 135
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Page 115
Page 116
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interest of the hard working staff since they will be rewarded for their good
efforts.
It will be worth canvassing, for instance, if a prescribed proportion of savings between actual and expected payroll arising from enhanced pro- ductivity can be assigned for distribution among employees of a given section, division, occupational grade, department or whatever unit considered appro- priate. This will not only help to place the linkage between performance and reward on a less bizarre footing but also serves as a powerful incentive in motivating employees. The productivity-related premium derived from labour cost savings can be entitled 'productivity bonus'. Regardless of the name, such a concept merits serious consideration in principle.
The Urban Services Department has on its establishment a multitude of staff grades as many as 123. Like their fellow colleagues working in other departments, they are equally susceptible to disputes regarding pay, structure and relativity. The Urban Council is deeply concerned with measures to provide them a fair deal at work. Nevertheless, equity and justice for them cannot be achieved in isolation but must be consistent with similar considera- tions for the public at large. Such consistency, I would say, will be heavily conditional upon the basic criteria of efficiency, output and performance which have not been stressed with sufficient vigour as past experience of salary and structure administration shows. It may be opportune for us now to spend some time pulling together this fragile structure into a more rational and coherent system.
I support the motion before Council.
MR STEPHEN M. L. LAU (in Cantonese):-Mr Chairman, many of my fellow Councillors have spoken just now and on the day before yesterday. I just want to add a point or two. The actual staff salaries which the Council had to pay for the year 1978-79 were approximately $300 million, while the estimate for 1979-80 is close to $370 million. The amount will still increase incessantly as the Council's services are expanding, and it will take up 60% of the total expenditure for the coming year. On the other hand, of the total revenue of $500 million, $390 million is from rates representing 78% of our revenue. In other words, the revenue from rates is just enough to pay the staff salaries. Should anything happen, the Council would have to resort to the sprinkling income from licence fees. When that time comes, the Council's services to the community will be seriously threatened. As it has been six years since the Council gained financial autonomy, it should not only be able to appropriate its funds independently, but should have the ability to maintain a balanced budget on its own and to ensure that the community gets its money's worth of service. The Council should not merely provide additional services, it should also practically satisfy the basic needs of the people and serve the interest of the general public.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 115 of 13
191
The Council has at present a staff of about 16,000, most of them being manual labourers. Staff is required to work day and night without stop, doing cleansing work, slaughtering pigs and cattle and carrying out other duties. Recently, Mr Chairman announced that in the next few years more projects will be completed and more various services and facilities will be offered to the public. The provision of these recreational, cultural and educa- tional facilities will call for the employment of a large number of supervisory staff and the provision of technical as well as management training. Although the Council has the Establishment Select Committee to attend to personnel matters, it has not yet thoroughly understood the problems or fully analysed the following points:
1 While planning a project, the Council should first make an estimate of
the cost including staff salaries and training expenses.
2 For each project, have we first of all made a feasibility study of adopting automation to cover labour shortage as there will be different estimates in the design and construction work?
3 Has the Council laid down any condition on the number of years that an officer who has undergone overseas specialized skill training is required to work for the Council upon his return so that the Council would not be blamed for wasting money?
The efficiency of the Council's staff should be compared to that of other organizations and kept under constant review in an effort to raise the quality of the Council's services and to reduce the cost and expenses for overtime work.
Since the Council attaches importance to the principle of operating on a more commercialized financial basis, it should make full use of the functions of its various sub-committees. With the exception of some which are purely for the purpose of rendering services to the public and therefore cannot be self-sufficient, the Council should try its best to operate all the others in the following business-like manner:
1 According to an unofficial estimate, the number of hawkers in Hong Kong at present is approximately over 100,000. Apart from some 30,000 who are licensed, over 70,000 are professional or amateur hawkers operating in the streets in various districts. They are seriously affecting the business of shops on both sides of the street, obstructing the traffic as well as causing environmental and health hazards. Not only is the Council unable to find a way to improve the situation, it has to come up with a subsidy of $30 million a year. If it takes 3 to 5 years to solve the problem, the taxpayers would have to shoulder a $150 million expenditure. Are we doing it for charity or are we doing it in the interest of the public? Looking at the problem from another angle, if each and every hawker occupies 50 sq. ft of the street, a total of 5,000,000 sq. ft of public land would be occupied by them. If rent is collected at a rate equivalent to half of that for the general ground-floor units in shopping centres (ie $4 per sq. ft), the annual rental would be $240 million. If rent is collected at a
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