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just say off hand what I personally would like to see. Now there are certain things that can be considered. For instance, whether we can have more tea parties together district by district, and Urban Councillors sent to the District Boards should be serving as District Board members, where we can make a satisfactory reply we should do that, where we can not we should try our best to understand our difficulties at the board. We are already doing our best in this regard. Now apart from tea parties, there are certain cultural and recreational activities which we could co-sponsor, sometimes there are certain projects of the District Boards which require our sponsorship and we do that and help them out with our funds as well as our human resources. As to venues, we have unlimited support for the District Boards when they want to use our venues, we have ten urban districts and we have fifteen large scale venues which could be rented out for the district purposes, but we let them have it free, this is all by way of improving our relationship with the District Boards. But as I said, the problem lies with human nature, the District Boards take everything for granted that we have a duty to serve them, they do not understand that when we do not charge them for using our venues, we actually deducting from our own budget, that is one of the causes of the bad relationship. But Mr. SHUM, I would like to thank you for giving us so many precious comments to further improve our relationships with the District Boards and we will have a more solid footing at the District Boards.
CHAIRMAN (in Cantonese): Any further questions, would you have any more valuable comments to make? (laughter)
MR. EDMUND CHOW (in Cantonese): Miss YEUNG repeated a few times the problem of human nature, what is human nature? My second question is we should be strengthening our ties, is this a bit too embarrassing and are we really trying to do something that is beyond our reach? (laughter)
MISS CECILIA YEUNG (in Cantonese): Thank you, Mr. CHOW, for coming to the crux of the matter, when I said we should strengthen our ties, we are really following the tradition of what have been done. Mr. CHOW was a previous chairman and I have been asked to take on the work of his good self and I am trying my best but I can hardly approach the level he reached. (laughter) Of course, I cannot just step down and leave everything undone, I hope that perhaps Mr. CHOW will further contribute his precious comments but really we need more informal contacts with the District Boards and that is why human nature contributed to the problem. For instance, when we have friendship, minor errors could be tolerated, but if two people are not good friends, they would try to pinpoint faults, they will try to find all sorts of mistakes and that would make things worse, so good friends can tolerate small mistakes, but if we are not on the good friendly basis then a lot of problems will ensue. We hope that Mr. Chow, our previous Chairman, can give us more precious opinion.
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MR. JOSEPH CHAN (in Cantonese): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the last opportunity, I have been sitting on the committee and although I agree that we should foster our ties with the District Boards, I feel that the committee has really not been able to do its work. A lot of the other select committees have been doing that work, from paragraphs 3 and 6 in Miss Yeung's original reply, this is really the work of the other select committees, so what I would like to know is that, can we abolish the District Relations Select Committee altogether? (laughter)
CHAIRMAN (in Cantonese): This is not directly relevant. Mr. FUNG, do you consider your question very important? (laughter)
MR. FREDERICK FUNG (in Cantonese): Yes, Mr. Chairman, when one raises his hand of course he is asking a very important question. Listening to the questions and answers, I discover one problem when we look at the relationship between the Urban Council and District Boards, we will see that the District Board members are pinpointing the mistakes of the Urban Council and whether it is important to maintain friendly terms with the District Boards? I think it is perfectly natural for District Board members to ask us questions concerning the Urban Council's work and it is perfectly natural for them to hold different views. Well, I think this contradiction is inevitable and I do not think this will affect the relationship between the District Boards and the Urban Council, we must accept this point of contradiction, this so-called 'conflict'. Just now, we mentioned about stepping up relationship with the District Boards, I would like to remind the District Relations Select Committee of the importance of the one point. Mr. Joseph CHAN has just pointed out some works and these works may not be within the jurisdiction of the District Relations Select Committee. But I think we should conduct more studies and we should make recommendations to other select committees so as to let them know what they should do more to enhance a good relation between the District Boards and Urban Council. Second thing, we need publicity, now we do not have one formal select committee to provide information to the District Boards to let them know more about the work of the Urban Council, perhaps we should have some printing materials distributed.
MISS CECILIA YEUNG (in Cantonese): Mr. Chairman, members are very interested in district relationship and that Mr. FUNG had said that this is an inevitable conflict but I would like to reiterate my point on human nature. Mr. CHOW said that some have human nature and some do not, I do not agree. But wherever we are serving we should have certain achievements and we try to achieve satisfaction, and if what we do is not rewarding to the district, the District Board members would think that we are really trying to create problems for them. As Mr. FUNG has just said, very often we do not have fights nor do we remember all the ill will after the meetings, there is a sort of gap between us, it is not really a gap of as such but the District Boards want to keep their role intact and they want to achieve their aims. Although it is really a
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just say off hand what I personally would like to see. Now there are certain things that can be considered. For instance, whether we can have more tea parties together district by district, and Urban Councillors sent to the District Boards should be serving as District Board members, where we can make a satisfactory reply we should do that, where we can not we should try our best to understand our difficulties at the board. We are already doing our best in this regard. Now apart from tea parties, there are certain cultural and recreational activities which we could co-sponsor, sometimes there are certain projects of the District Boards which require our sponsorship and we do that and help them out with our funds as well as our human resources. As to venues, we have unlimited support for the District Boards when they want to use our venues, we have ten urban districts and we have fifteen large scale venues which could be rented out for the district purposes, but we let them have it free, this is all by way of improving our relationship with the District Boards. But as I said, the problem lies with human nature, the District Boards take everything for granted that we have a duty to serve them, they do not understand that when we do not charge them for using our venues, we actually deducting from our own budget, that is one of the causes of the bad relationship. But Mr. SHUM, I would like to thank you for giving us so many precious comments to further improve our relationships with the District Boards and we will have a more solid footing at the District Boards.
CHAIRMAN (in Cantonese):-Any further questions, would you have any more valuable comments to make? (laughter)
MR. EDMUND CHOW (in Cantonese):-Miss YEUNG repeated a few times the problem of human nature, what is human nature? My second question is we should be strengthening our ties, is this a bit too embarrassing and are we really trying to do something that is beyond our reach? (laughter)
MISS CECILIA YEUNG (in Cantonese): Thank you, Mr. CHOw, for coming to the crux of the matter, when I said we should strengthen our ties, we are really following the tradition of what have been done. Mr. CHOW was a previous chairman and I have been asked to take on the work of his good self and I am trying my best but I can hardly approach the level he reached. (laughter) Of course, I cannot just step down and leave everything undone, I hope that perhaps Mr. CHOW will further contribute his precious comments but really we need more informal contacts with the District Boards and that is why human nature contributed to the problem. For instance, when we have friendship, minor errors could be tolerated, but if two people are not good friends, they would try to pinpoint faults, they will try to find all sorts of mistakes and that would make things worse, so good friends can tolerate small mistakes, but if we are not on the good friendly basis then a lot of problems will ensue. We hope that Mr. Chow, our previous Chairman, can give us more precious opinion.
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MR. JOSEPH CHAN (in Cantonese):--Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the last opportunity, I have been sitting on the committee and although I agree that we should foster our ties with the District Boards, I feel that the committee has really not been able to do its work. A lot of the other select committees have been doing that work, from paragraphs 3 and 6 in Miss Yeung's original reply, this is really the work of the other select committees, so what I would like to know is that, can we abolish the District Relations Select Committee altogether? (laughter)
CHAIRMAN (in Cantonese): This is not directly relevant. Mr. FUNG, do you consider your question very important? (laughter)
MR. FREDERICK FUNG (in Cantonese):--Yes, Mr. Chairman, when one raises his hand of course he is asking a very important question. Listening to the questions and answers, I discover one problem when we look at the relationship between the Urban Council and District Boards, we will see that the District Board members are pinpointing the mistakes of the Urban Council and whether it is important to maintain friendly terms with the District Boards? I think it is perfectly natural for District Board members to ask us questions concerning the Urban Council's work and it is perfectly natural for them to hold different views. Well, I think this contradiction is inevitable and I do not think this will affect the relationship between the District Boards and the Urban Council, we must accept this point of contradiction, this so-called 'conflict'. Just now, we mentioned about stepping up relationship with the District Boards, I would like to remind the District Relations Select Committee of the importance of the one point. Mr. Joseph CHAN has just pointed out some works and these works may not be within the jurisdiction of the District Relations Selcet Committee. But I think we should conduct more studies and we should make recommendations to other select committees so as to let them know what they should do more to enhance a good relation between the District Boards and Urban Council. Second thing, we need publicity, now we do not have one formal select committee to provide information to the District Boards to let them know more about the work of the Urban Council, perhaps we should have some printing materials distributed.
MISS CECILIA YEUNG (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, members are very interested in district relationship and that Mr. FUNG had said that this is an inevitable conflict but I would like to reiterate my point on human nature. Mr. CHOW said that some have human nature and some do not, I do not agree. But wherever we are serving we should have certain achievements and we try to achieve satisfaction, and if what we do is not rewarding to the district, the District Board members would think that we are really trying to create problems for them. As Mr. FUNG has just said, very often we do not have fights nor do we remember all the ill will after the meetings, there is a sort of gap between us, it is not really a gap of as such but the District Boards want to keep their role intact and they want to achieve their aims. Although it is really a
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