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we had representatives from a couple of the oil companies, from the power companies, from the motor trade etc., and our achievements then and incidentally, also still now, were mainly based on an 'old boy' network the premier instances of course being the voluntary substitution of expensive low sulphur oil in the power stations when wind and weather situations made this necessary, the motor trade voluntarily ordering cars with EEC emission controls fitted, and the oil companies voluntarily agreeing to drop the lead levels in petrol and the sulphur levels in diesel. Once EPCOM was founded there was considerable thought given by the unofficials to the organization of EPCOM and after a great many conferences between the civil servants and ourselves, we came up with an organization which I thought made the very best of a bad job, namely, a small main committee including representatives from various trade and industrial organizations and from which were then drawn the Chairmen and Vice-chairmen of the necessary supporting committees. Please note that word 'supporting'. These were not sub-committees but supporting committees and were and still are necessary because by its very nature pollution (although there are cross-overs like the Kai Tak nullah where water pollution becomes air pollution) mainly falls into fairly tight compartments which need different expertise and quite different approaches. So we had, in alphabetical order, the Special Committee on Air Pollution, the Special Committee for Land & Water Pollution (there was always a great deal of discussion as to whether this Committee should not split into two since quite often although land pollution becomes water pollution, the problems of land and water pollution are really quite different), and the Special Committee on Noise Pollution. The main committee membership would fluctuate between a dozen and 20 members and the supporting committee membership would also fluctuate between 15 and 25 members. This meant, in fact, that we could spread the net quite wide and make sure that apart from the industrial and trade organizations, actual polluters were still represented on the various committees. We could also make sure that we had Doctors, University Professors etc. on these committees.
None of us were consulted about the reorganization of EPCOM which took place this summer, so everything that I am now going to say is surmise, but it is surmise based on more than 15 years of experience of dealing with Hong Kong Civil Servants and the way some of them think and what makes me so suspicious about the reorganizations of EPCOM was the excessive secrecy with which it was completed. In the last meeting I chaired of the Special Committee on Air Pollution approximately two weeks before the reorganizations were announced, I made a complete fool of myself by saying that I looked forward to seeing most of the members again at next season's sessions, and then discussed a full plan for the up-coming year's work. There were at least three Civil Servants at that meeting who knew there would not be a next year's session and could have stopped me by indicating that things would change very radically. But they didn't!
The first indication we had that we were all being given the sack was a casual announcement, as an afterthought, at a special EPCOM meeting saying that
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the Annual General Meeting of EPCOM, which would be two weeks hence, would be cancelled. This was after all the Chairmen had, at the Secretary's of Health & Welfare request, written their speeches and the members of the various special committees were looking forward to having their once yearly say in public, and obviously this is where the rub lay. They didn't want us to speak in public, and little wonder when you look at the record.
One of the major problems Government had with EPCOM and its supporting committees was that quite often they wouldn't toe the line. We had our own experts on the committee who quite frequently would disagree with the official experts. Also, quite frequently, the unofficial chairmen of the various supporting committees would put items on the agenda which the Civil Service didn't want to be discussed at that particular time, and what was even more annoying to them, quite often individuals would bring up matters in the Committees which according to the Civil Servants were outside the remit of an Environmental Pollution Committee. The most famous of these being indoor air pollution and the Daya Bay nuclear power station. So I think the reasoning in the Health & Welfare branch of the Secretariat and the EPA went something like this: It is bad policy to have too much unofficial interference. Government must lead and must not be led. Also, it is bad policy to go too fast in implementing environmental pollution clean-ups because it is too expensive, too time consuming and could make Hong Kong less competitive. We now have sufficient expertise within the EPA so that we don't want to have unofficial experts telling us that our Government experts don't know what they are talking about. So let's get rid of all the trouble makers and get a whole new group of people whom it will take a couple of years to learn the ropes while we consolidate and make the EPA an executive branch of the Government, ergo let's centralize everything into one small EPCOM committee and let's get rid of the supporting committees.
Now if the Secretary of Health & Welfare had had the decency to consult us on the basis that reorganization was necessary and that some of us had served far too long, I personally certainly would have agreed immediately to step down since ten years in one frustrating semi-government job is quite enough. But my advice would have been to keep the supporting committees because the amount of business which will have to be done via EPCOM cannot be handled by one relatively small committee, and I would have pointed to the very simple statistics of the meetings of the various committees. The Air Pollution Committee alone usually had between 5 and 6 meetings a year, some years more, and normally discussed a dozen subjects at a meeting. Out of these sometimes one or at most two would be forwarded on to the main committee for final decisions while many of the others were on-going problems which needed monitoring and constant follow-up. To give instances: I don't suppose there was one meeting of the air pollution committee in the last three years when smoking diesels were not mentioned and in the last couple of years practically every meeting was also concerned with lead and asbestos.
Page 189 of 233
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we had representatives from a couple of the oil companies, from the power companies, from the motor trade etc., and our achievements then and incidentally, also still now, were mainly based on an 'old boy' network the premier instances of course being the voluntary substitution of expensive low sulphur oil in the power stations when wind and weather situations made this necessary, the motor trade voluntarily ordering cars with EEC emission controls fitted, and the oil companies voluntarily agreeing to drop the lead levels in petrol and the sulphur levels in diesel. Once EPCOM was founded there was considerable thought given by the unofficials to the organization of EPCOM and after a great many conferences between the civil servants and ourselves, we came up with an organization which I thought made the very best of a bad job, namely, a small main committee including representatives from various trade and industrial organizations and from which were then drawn the Chairmen and Vice-chairmen of the necessary supporting committees. Please note that word 'supporting'. These were not sub-committees but supporting committees and were and still are necessary because by its very nature pollution (although there are cross-overs like the Kai Tak nullah where water pollution becomes air pollution) mainly falls into fairly tight compartments which need different expertise and quite different approaches. So we had, in alphabetical order, the Special Committee on Air Pollution, the Special Committee for Land & Water Pollution (there was always a great deal of discussion as to whether this Committee should not split into two since quite often although land pollution becomes water pollution, the problems of land and water pollution are really quite different), and the Special Committee on Noise Pollution. The main committee membership would fluctuate between a dozen and 20 members and the supporting committee membership would also fluctuate between 15 and 25 members. This meant, in fact, that we could spread the net quite wide and make sure that apart from the industrial and trade organizations, actual polluters were still represented on the various committees. We could also make sure that we had Doctors, University Professors etc. on these committees.
None of us were consulted about the reorganization of EPCOM which took place this summer, so everything that I am now going to say is surmise, but it is surmise based on more than 15 years of experience of dealing with Hong Kong Civil Servants and the way some of them think and what makes me so suspicious about the reorganizations of EPCOM was the excessive secrecy with which it was completed. In the last meeting I chaired of the Special Committee on Air Pollution approximately two weeks before the reorganizations were announced, I made a complete fool of myself by saying that I looked forward to seeing most of the members again at next season's sessions, and then discussed a full plan for the up-coming year's work. There were at least three Civil Servants at that meeting who knew there would not be a next years session and could have stopped me by indicating that things would change very radically. But they didn't!
The first indication we had that we were all being given the sack was a casual announcement, as an afterthought, at a special EPCOM meeting saying that
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 189 of 233
339
the Annual General Meeting of EPCOM, which would be two weeks hence, would be cancelled. This was after all the Chairmen had, at the Secretary's of Health & Welfare request, written their speeches and the members of the various special committees were looking forward to having their once yearly say in public, and obviously this is where the rub lay. They didn't want us to speak in public, and little wonder when you look at the record.
One of the major problems Government had with EPCOM and its sup- porting committees was that quite often they wouldn't toe the line. We had our own experts on the committee who quite frequently would disagree with the official experts. Also, quite frequently, the unofficial chairmen of the various supporting committees would put items on the agenda which the Civil Service didn't want to be discussed at that particular time, and what was even more annoying to them, quite often individuals would bring up matters in the Committees which according to the Civil Servants were outside the remit of an Environmental Pollution Committee. The most famous of these being indoor air pollution and the Daya Bay nuclear power station. So I think the reasoning in the Health & Welfare branch of the Secretariat and the EPA went something like this: It is bad policy to have too much unofficial interference. Government must lead and must not be led. Also, it is bad policy to go too fast in implementing environmental pollution clean-ups because it is too expensive, too time consuming and could make Hong Kong less competitive. We now have sufficient expertise within the EPA so that we don't want to have unofficial experts telling us that our Government experts don't know what they are talking about. So let's get rid of all the trouble makers and get a whole new group of people whom it will take a couple of years to learn the ropes while we consolidate and make the EPA an executive branch of the Government, ergo let's centralize everything into one small EPCOM committee and let's get rid of the supporting committees.
Now if the Secretary of Health & Welfare had had the decency to consult us on the basis that reorganization was necessary and that some of us had served far too long, I personally certainly would have agreed immediately to step. down since ten years in one frustrating semi-government job is quite enough. But my advice would have been to keep the supporting committees because the amount of business which will have to be done via EPCOM cannot be handled by one relatively small committee, and I would have pointed to the very simple statistics of the meetings of the various committees. The Air Pollution Com- mittee alone usually had between 5 and 6 meetings a year, some years more, and normally discussed a dozen subjects at a meeting. Out of these sometimes one or at most two would be forwarded on to the main committee for final decisions while many of the others were on-going problems which needed monitoring and constant follow-up. To give instances: I don't suppose there was one meeting of the air pollution committee in the last three years when smoking diesels were not mentioned and in the last couple of years practically every meeting was also concerned with lead and asbestos.
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