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the Department will consider my suggestion in the spirit in which it is being made.
One must also look very carefully at possibly sub-contracting a great deal of what we now do in-house. I know from figures I have seen in the U.K. and the United States that savings of up to 50% are possible by going private on certain types of cleansing operations. I am not saying that it is possible to do that here. I am just saying that it should be investigated and investigated in depth.
There are many areas where completely new approaches to problems could bring very large savings. I think, for instance, our procedures for liquor licencing, restaurant licencing, billiard licencing etc. are very cumbersome and cause great inconvenience to the applicants as well as, in some cases, to the public. The issuance of such licences takes too long and it is quite ridiculous that an applicant has to go through a separate procedure for a liquor licence and a restaurant licence for the same premises which could easily be handled together as could also billiard licences and T.V. game licences etc. I am sure considerable manpower and paper savings could be effected and our relations with the public improved if this were rationalized. Incidentally, also, there is a possible large source of income here because obviously such licences are valuable since I notice that both liquor licence and billiard room licence applicants who are appealing against refusal can afford to pay for high powered lawyers which probably costs them something like HK$50,000 whereas we charge HK$1,500 for a liquor licence. I know that the policy is to set licence fees so as to only recover what it costs us to issue such licences but because, I am sure, we don't really know how much manpower is involved, I think this very cumbersome procedure costs us far more than we think it does. My personal opinion would be that we should charge HK$5,000 per 100 sq. meters for a combined liquor and restaurant licence and HK$1,500 per table for billiard room licences and I see nothing wrong with such licence fees financing, say, a very small part of our hawker control deficits.
Sir, I believe the Government, the Urban Services Department and this Council are very remiss in their duties to keep our waters clean. Our beaches are very often unsightly with debris on and off the beaches, hurting swimmers and sunbathers, and spoiling one of the few recreations possible to our population in this densely populated territory and it costs millions of dollars to clean up the mess. It must also not be forgotten that it raises the ferry fares because millions of dollars of damage are caused to hulls, propeller-shafts, propellers, water jet drives, and engines because their water intakes are blocked by plastic bags etc. and, of course, the costs of repair of such damage is passed on to the customer.
To deal with this problem properly, one must first of all recognize that there is no spontaneous creation of the pollution which disfigures our waters. 90% of it originates on the land so the most cost effective step and one which must be effected by the U.S.D. and this Council and the N.T.S.D. is to prevent this stuff from getting into the water in the first place. We must study the problem and tackle it at source. What is required is to prevent rubbish being chucked into the nullahs, or if it is in the nullahs, prevent it entering the Harbour waters. What is required are booms at all reclamations and any tip which is near the water. What is required is some research to find out how other ports in the world affected by the same problem are tackling the matter, and what is required is a far better scavenging fleet than we have now and effective enforcement of the law punishing offenders who chuck rubbish into the water from their craft.
The sad fact is that wherever we look, whether it is in the harbour, on the beaches or in the open sea approaches to Hong Kong, our waters have never been dirtier. The other day when returning from abroad flying into Hong Kong the mess as seen from the aeroplane at Lyemun was so great that one could have walked upon it.
Mr. Chairman, I hope that this Council will take effective measures to prevent this type of water pollution and thereby save both the Council and the public a great deal of money and, incidentally, give back to our population the amenities of clean water at their beaches.
Sir, I want to congratulate our Art Museum staff and especially its Curator on the really excellent job they are doing in completely inadequate premises of procuring first class exhibitions of which surely the exhibition of Thai sculpture must have been last years' masterpiece. I am constantly surprised that in view of these inadequate premises, other museums are willing to lend us some of their completely priceless exhibits. I really think that Hong Kong should be ashamed of itself to have done so little in all these years to build Museums and increase our collections. We are a city the size of Chicago or Osaka and we have two hole-in-the-wall puny museums of which any Central European city with less than 100,000 inhabitants would be ashamed. Because of this we cannot attract large loan exhibitions, which would have an invaluable educational impact on our students, because we have nowhere to put them. For instance, the sort of introduction to Greek art and culture epitomized by the travelling exhibition ‘In Search of Alexander' would be quite impossible to mount here, and I would like to point out while I am at it that the planned museums for Hong Kong, the Art Museum which hopefully will go next to the Space Museum on the Kowloon Waterfront and the Museum of History and the Museum of Science which are planned for East Tsim Sha Tsui will still be considerably smaller than for instance, similar museums in a town like Stuttgart in Germany which is 5 times smaller than we are. I think I should also point out that we are only spending 3% of the total budget of the Urban Council next year on our Museums. I am making these remarks because I want to forestall any thought by the Central Government of axing the building of our Museums because of the recession, and if such a thing were done by the Central Government I would very strongly advocate that this Council builds its own Museums just as it built the Space Museum. I believe we owe it to all Hong Kong belongers to give our youth the educational and recreational facilities such museums provide.
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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
the Department will consider my suggestion in the spirit in which it is being
made.
One must also look very carefully at possibly sub-contracting a great deal of what we now do in-house. I know from figures I have seen in the U.K. and the United States that savings of up to 50% are possible by going private on certain types of cleansing operations. I am not saying that it is possible to do that here. I am just saying that it should be investigated and investigated in depth.
There are many areas where completely new approaches to problems could bring very large savings. I think, for instance, our procedures for liquor licencing, restaurant licencing, billiard licencing etc. are very cumbersome and cause great inconvenience to the applicants as well as, in some cases, to the public. The issuance of such licences takes too long and it is quite ridiculous that an applicant has to go through a separate procedure for a liquor licence and a restaurant licence for the same premises which could easily be handled together as could also billiard licences and T.V. game licences etc. I am sure considerable manpower and paper savings could be effected and our relations with the public improved if this were rationalized. Incidentally, also, there is a possible large source of income here because obviously such licences are valuable since I notice that both liquor licence and billiard room licence applicants who are appealing against refusal can afford to pay for high powered lawyers which probably costs them something like HK$50,000 whereas we charge HK$1,500 for a liquor licence. I know that the policy is to set licence fees so as to only recover what it costs us to issue such licences but because, I am sure, we don't really know how much manpower is involved, I think this very cumbersome procedure costs us far more than we think it does. My personal opinion would be that we should charge HK$5,000 per 100 sq. meters for a combined liquor and restaurant licence and HK$1,500 per table for billiard room licences and I see nothing wrong with such licence fees financing, say, a very small part of our hawker control deficits.
Sir, I believe the Government, the Urban Services Department and this Council are very remiss in their duties to keep our waters clean. Our beaches are very often unsightly with debris on and off the beaches, hurting swimmers and sunbathers, and spoiling one of the few recreations possible to our population in this densely populated territory and it costs millions of dollars to clean up the mess. It must also not be forgotten that it raises the ferry fares because millions of dollars of damage are caused to hulls, propeller-shafts, propellers, water jet drives, and engines because their water intakes are blocked by plastic bags etc. and, of course, the costs of repair of such damage is passed on to the customer.
To deal with this problem properly, one must first of all recognize that there is no spontaneous creation of the pollution which disfigures our waters. 90% of it originates on the land so the most cost effective step and one which must be effected by the U.S.D. and this Council and the N.T.S.D. is to prevent this stuff from getting into the water in the first place. We must study the problem and tackle it at source. What is required is to prevent rubbish being chucked into the
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 120 of 142
nullahs,
or if it is in the nullahs, prevent it entering the Harbour waters. What is required are booms at all reclamations and any tip which is near the water. What is required is some research to find out how other ports in the world affected by the same problem are tackling the matter, and what is required is a far better scavenging fleet than we have now and effective enforcement of the law punishing offenders who chuck rubbish into the water from their craft.
The sad fact is that wherever we look, whether it is in the harbour, on the beaches or in the open sea approaches to Hong Kong, our waters have never been dirtier. The other day when returning from abroad flying into Hong Kong the mess as seen from the aeroplane at Lyemun was so great that one could have walked upon
it.
Mr. Chairman, I hope that this Council will take effective measures to prevent this type of water pollution and thereby save both the Council and the public a great deal of money and, incidentally, give back to our population the amenities of clean water at their beaches.
Sir, I want to congratulate our Art Museum staff and especially its Curator on the really excellent job they are doing in completely inadequate premises of procuring first class exhibitions of which surely the exhibition of Thai sculpture must have been last years' masterpiece. I am constantly surprised that in view of these inadequate premises, other museums are willing to lend us some of their completely priceless exhibits. I really think that Hong Kong should be ashamed of itself to have done so little in all these years to build Museums and increase our collections. We are a city the size of Chicago or Osaka and we have two hole-in-the-wall puny museums of which any Central European city with less than 100 000 inhabits would be ashamed. Because of this we cannot attract large loan exhibitions, which would have an invaluable educational impact on our students, because we have nowhere to put them. For instance, the sort of introduction to Greek art and culture epitomized by the travelling exhibition ‘In Search of Alexander' would be quite impossible to mount here, and I would like to point out while I am at it that the planned museums for Hong Kong, the Art Museum which hopefully will go next to the Space Museum on the Kowloon Waterfront and the Museum of History and the Museum of Science which are planned for East Tsim Sha Tsui will still be considerably smaller than for instance, similar museums in a town like Stuttgart in Germany which is 5 times smaller than we are. I think I should also point out that we are only spending 3% of the total budget of the Urban Council next year on our Museums. I am making these remarks because I want to forestall any thought by the Central Government of axing the building of our Museums because of the recession, and if such a thing were done by the Central Government I would very strongly advocate that this Council builds its own Museums just as it built the Space Museum. I believe we owe it to all Hong Kong belongers to give our youth the educational and recreational facilities such museums provide.
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