180
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
on any
Department assures us that they have a full environmental syllabus in all their schools and universities, the results seen on any mid-summer evening beach in Hong Kong are lamentable: While in Vancouver the same
Hong Kong born Chinese children tell their parents and passers-by not to litter the street, the recreation areas, or the beaches and can be seen actually picking up litter and putting it into wastebins without being urged to do so, on Repulse Bay Beach with wastebins spaced every ten yards you see our teenagers leaving their rubbish five yards from a rubbish bin without ever making any effort to pick it up. So what do the education authorities in Canada know that ours don't, and what should the Keep Hong Kong Clean Committee do to convince Government and our educationalists that if we are really going to keep the City clean we have to instill social responsibility into our kids? I am not a teacher. I don't know the answer. But I think we must try and find the answer and my Committee needs much more help from experts than we are now getting. We can hold the older generation in check by fining them (and one hopes that magistrates will increase such fines to make them more effective) but ever really going to be successful in creating a truly clean Hong Kong we must get the younger generation on side. They must want to Keep the City Clean.
we are
One of the biggest problems which is going to face this Council in the next three years is Government manufactured. Namely, how to integrate this Urban Council and the Urban District Boards into some sort of system that makes sense. Government was warned years ago not only by outsiders but by many Civil Servants that it would be very difficult to make Advisory District Boards work without upsetting the rest of the Governmental system and was advised already then that it would be far better to create Borough Councils feeding into a Greater Hong Kong Council, which would have created a genuine local Government including, as is done everywhere else in the world, housing, transport, and the fire brigade within its purview. Now we have to find crutches, band aids, and elastic bandages to make the best of a very bad job.
Just how ambivalent Government is about the District Boards can be seen by the entirely inadequate premises District Boards have to use for their meetings. I have sat on both Kwun Tong and Southern and have marvelled at how other members of the Board live with the indignities imposed on them by their surroundings, and have felt sorry for the media who have to huddle together on hard benches. The only good thing about their discomfort is that it keeps them awake during some of the more soporific speeches since there is no way to lean back. In the case of the Southern District we even have to use the goods entrance to get to our meeting place. No citizen seeing these premises could possibly be convinced that District Boards have any kind of influence or power. No wonder our colleagues on the District Boards are frustrated.
Now this interface between the Urban Council and District Boards has been much discussed both inside and outside this Council. In this Council a very high-powered Working Party has been considering the subject and I don't want to repeat what has already been said by others and by myself. Government is
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pushing hard for Urban Councillors to be elected indirectly by the District Boards which is a retrograde step because now we are the only Government body with both executive powers and directly elected members.
Obviously it is nonsense to have some members indirectly elected from District Boards when others are elected from constituencies which are already covered by District Board constituencies. If Government insists to saddle us with indirect elections also for the Urban Council, then, at the very least, there should be direct elections to this Council on a territory-wide basis instead of on a constituency basis. I could envisage an Urban Council consisting of ten appointed, ten directly elected on a territory-wide basis, and ten indirectly elected from the Urban District Boards. I would not like to see more than 30 members on this Council. I think, in fact, 30 is already too many but with more than 30 the Council will become unwieldy. But I would much prefer to see a Council with ten appointed and twenty directly elected members.
As has been pointed out there are many other ways of solving the problem of interface between local advisory bodies and an executive body such as ours but I don't think anything is really going to work until the District Boards become executive. Because until they become executive they will not understand what this Council is all about since someone who is acting in a purely advisory role without having to worry about any financial or other responsibilities wears very different shoes from all of us here. So the logical sensible way of handling the interface is to make the District Boards executive: To give them financial responsibility. And if Government won't do this THEN WHY DON'T WE DO IT INSTEAD?
My suggestion is quite simple: We set aside HK$100 million from our budget and allocate approximately HK$10 million to each District Board to be spent by them in whichever way they see fit, the only condition being that they have to submit a budget to us which has to be approved by us. As far as possible of course anything done with that HK$10 million should have some bearing on our work. As a simple instance, we could say that the District Boards, when they plant special greenery which is not within our own plans, have to maintain this themselves and use the money we have given them to do so. Or instead of us putting on shows for them in their Districts they can finance their own entertainment etc. etc. To get them off the ground we might have to lend them some supervisory staff from the U.S.D. but the work can all be carried out by private contractors so no specially dedicated Civil Service would be needed. And if the system works, which I am sure it will, we increase the amounts we allocate to the District Boards year by year, which will put them well on the road to full executive responsibility which I think could be achieved for each District Board within about 5 or 6 years after starting the scheme I am now suggesting.
I believe this is the only possible way of achieving an integration without scrapping the whole system and starting all over again, and since we are financially autonomous I do not think that we have to have Government
Page 106 of 19:
180
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
on any
Department assures us that they have a full environmental syllabus in all their schools and universities, the results seen on any mid-summer evening beach in Hong Kong are lamentable: While in Vancouver the same
Hong Kong born Chinese children tell their parents and passers-by not to litter the street, the recreation arcas, or the beaches and can be seen actually picking up litter and putting it into wastebins without being urged to do so, on Repulse Bay Beach with wastebins spaced every ten yards you see our teenagers leaving their rubbish five yards from a rubbish bin without ever making any effort to pick it up. So what do the education authorities in Canada know that ours don't, and what should the Keep Hong Kong Clean Committee do to convince Government and our educationalists that if we are really going to keep the City clean we have to instill social responsibility into our kids? I am not a teacher. I don't know the answer. But I think we must try and find the answer and my Committee needs much more help from experts than we are now getting. We can hold the older generation in check by fining them (and one hopes that magistrates will increase such fines to make them more effective) but ever really going to be successful in creating a truly clean Hong Kong we must get the younger generation on side. They must want to Keep the City Clean.
we are
One of the biggest problems which is going to face this Council in the next three years is Government manufactured. Namely, how to integrate this Urban Council and the Urban District Boards into some sort of system that makes sense. Government was warned years ago not only by outsiders but by many Civil Servants that it would be very difficult to make Advisory District Boards work without upsetting the rest of the Governmental system and was advised already then that it would be far better to create Borough Councils feeding into a Greater Hong Kong Council, which would have created a genuine local Government including, as is done everywhere else in the world, housing, transport, and the fire brigade within its purview. Now we have to find crutches, band aids, and elastic bandages to make the best of a very bad job.
Just how ambivalent Government is about the District Boards can be seen by the entirely inadequate premises District Boards have to use for their meetings. I have sat on both Kwun Tong and Southern and have marvelled at how other members of the Board live with the indignities imposed on them by their surroundings, and have felt sorry for the media who have to huddle together on hard benches. The only good thing about their discomfort is that it keeps them awake during some of the more soporific speeches since there is no way to lean back. In the case of the Southern District we even have to use the goods entrance to get to our meeting place. No citizen seeing these premises could possibly be convinced that District Boards have any kind of influence or power. No wonder our colleagues on the District Boards are frustrated.
Now this interface between the Urban Council and District Boards has been much discussed both inside and outside this Council. In this Council a very high-powered Working Part has been considering the subject and I don't want to repeat what has already been said by others and by myself. Government is
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 106 of 195
181
pushing hard for Urban Councillors to be elected indirectly by the District Boards which is a retrograde step because now we are the only Government body with both executive powers and directly elected members.
Obviously it is nonsense to have some members indirectly elected from District Boards when others are elected from constituencies which are already covered by District Board constituencies. If Government insists to saddle us with indirect elections also for the Urban Council, then, at the very least, there should be direct elections to this Council on a territorywide basis instead of on a constituency basis. I could envisage an Urban Council consisting of ten appointed, ten directly elected on a territorywide basis, and ten indirectly elected from the Urban District Boards. I would not like to see more than 30 members on this Council. I think, in fact, 30 is already too many but with more than 30 the Council will become unwieldy. But I would much prefer to see a Council with ten appointed and twenty directly elected members.
As has been pointed out there are many other ways of solving the problem of interface between local advisory bodies and an executive body such as ours but I don't think anything is really going to work until the District Boards become executive. Because until they become executive they will not understand what this Council is all about since someone who is acting in a purely advisory role without having to worry about any financial or other responsibilities wears very different shoes from all of us here. So the logical sensible way of handling the interface is to make the District Boards executive: To give them financial responsibility. And if Government won't do this THEN WHY DON'T WE DO IT INSTEAD?
My suggestion is quite simple: We set aside HK$100 million from our budget and allocate approximately HK$10 million to each District Board to be spent by them in whichever way they see fit, the only condition being that they have to submit a budget to us which has to be approved by us. As far as possible of course anything done with that HK$10 million should have some bearing on our work. As a simple instance, we could say that the District Boards, when they plant special greenery which is not within our own plans, have to maintain this themselves and use the money we have given them to do so. Or instead of us putting on shows for them in their Districts they can finance their own entertainment etc. etc. To get them off the ground we might have to lend them some supervisory staff from the U.S.D. but the work can all be carried out by private contractors so no specially dedicated Civil Service would be needed. And if the system works, which I am sure it will, we increase the amounts we allocate to the District Boards year by year, which will put them well on the road to full executive responsibility which I think could be achieved for each District Board within about 5 or 6 years after starting the scheme I am now suggesting.
I believe this is the only possible way of achieving an integration without scrapping the whole system and starting all over again, and since we are financially autonomous I do not think that we have to have Government
Page 106 of 19:
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