242
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
bomb on us and so I had to rewrite it and make a bit longer than it was supposed to be originally. I am going to distribute, the written speech, because I am deviating from the written speech quite a bit.
First of all, I would like to suggest that it is time the title of our Chairman is changed to that of Mayor. Everybody expects to find the Mayor of Hong Kong and asks who is the Mayor and all we can do is to point to the Chairman. Well, I think he should be the Mayor of the twin cities of Victoria and Kowloon, and it is time that we did it.
And while I am on the matter, I think we ought to have another go with the Government because they still won't allow us to twin with other cities. And again, it makes us look ridiculous because we get requests from all sorts of very nice, very important cities in the world and we can't do it. And I give the reasons in the written speech so you can read it.
Traditionally, we use the Annual Debate for Chairman to report on the activities of their committees. Of course, as Chairman of Finance, I have already done that when I seconded the Budget speech but I would like to say one thing. I have just written yesterday a letter to the newspapers about the foolishness of negative interests (copy attached). I wonder whether everybody in the Government really thought about this because the Council has quite large reserves and very often we have income which comes early and we haven't spent yet. So we put it on deposit. Right now we have something like four hundred million Hong Kong dollars on deposit. Now is the Government or the banks going to charge the ratepayers negative interest? I beg them to think about that.
As Chairman of Urban Council Keep Hong Kong Clean Committee, I would like to say a few words about our present and our next year's campaign. These campaigns, by their very nature, must be educational. We must educate both by exhortation and by example. The idea is to instill a sense of pride in a clean city and countryside so that the ordinary citizen will reprimand his neighbour or his family when they are seen to rubbish the city. For the first time in this year's campaign we have tried to do just that, a considerable difference from previous campaigns which emphasized the prosecution angle. Prosecution of course is necessary and obviously prosecution by itself will not change anyone's attitude, and it is the attitude that has to be changed. The hit tune produced by GIS and their advertising agents with the generous help of Alan TAM, who gave his services free of charge, summarizes our new approach which we will also carry forward into this year's campaign. In addition to this, for the first time we have involved commercial interests and the Armed Forces, both of whom have given us great help, especially the Armed Forces who cleaned places we normally can't get to, and we hope to carry on this cooperation, and hopefully widen it in the private sector. I am very grateful to all my colleagues because with their help we have been able to again agree on a very large budget for this coming year's campaign, and I would hope that Central Government will follow our example and that of the Regional Council, who also have contributed the same amount as
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 126 of 185
243
last year, and again pitch in because we do need the money for this campaign. I want to take this opportunity of thanking both the USD and the RSD for all the very hard work they put into last year's campaign (when I speak of last year's campaign of course it is still going on because we live by the financial year and not by the calendar year). They have worked wonders and their help in organizing the many special events is especially appreciated. I also want to thank the Education Department for working hard to disseminate the Clean Hong Kong message in schools, and I am especially pleased to hear that now they are working on a proper teaching curriculum which goes into detail on the production and disposal of litter which I hope will reinforce our message to the
younger generation.
Sad to say, although we have some success in keeping our environment clean of litter and garbage, on the whole the pollution picture has worsened quite considerably in the last few years and is now worse than I can ever remember. All the alarms I sounded when I was a member of EPCOM and chairing the Special Air Pollution Committee seem to have gone unheeded. We are getting closer and closer to catastrophe, and it is really galling to find that Government again has commissioned a study on sewage disposal when such a study was made more than ten years ago and nothing whatsoever was done in spite of recommendations by EPCOM for actions to be taken then. Now the situation is ten years worse and will no doubt cost three or four times the amount of money it would have cost if our advice had been followed, and in the meantime our harbour right outside this building stinks like a sewer and many of our beaches have become unuseable. Although that is a very large problem, our air pollution is a much worse problem. Particulate pollution, which is the most dangerous kind, is well above world limits, mainly because of building and reclamation activities which are not properly controlled, but also because of our badly maintained fleet of diesel taxis, mini buses, and other buses and trucks belching particulate smoke into our atmosphere, and our noise pollution is among the worst, if not the worst, in the world. And yet Government kowtows to pig farmers on waste disposal, to oil companies on air pollution, to the construction industry on noise pollution. It is time these vested interest minorities are told by the majority to go and drown in their own pollution and that Government is told 'For God's sakes stop pussyfooting around and do something!'
The problem I have today is that there is so much more to talk about. For instance, I would like to talk about Government Planning in Hong Kong (a contradiction in terms!) which produces blunders like the Lion Rock Tunnel, the lack of parking for container transport, a second Cross Harbour Tunnel without the necessary feeder roads, the juxtaposition of industry with residential accommodation in Junk Bay producing environmental hazards for the intended population (not to mention a huge waste tip next door which means our garbage lorries will be forced to run through the centre of town all day). I would like to talk about the horrendous lack of supervision and control at the building
242
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
bomb on us and so I had to rewrite it and make a bit longer than it was supposed to be originally. I am going to distribute, the written speech, because I am deviating from the written speech quite a bit.
First of all, I would like to suggest that it is time the title of our Chairman is changed to that of Mayor. Everybody expects to find the Mayor of Hong Kong and asks who is the Mayor and all we can do is to point to the Chairman. Well, I think he should be the Mayor of the twin cities of Victoria and Kowloon, and it is time that we did it.
And while I am on the matter, I think we ought to have another go with the Government because they still won't allow us to twin with other cities. And again, it makes us look ridiculous because we get requests from all sorts of very nice, very important cities in the world and we can't do it. And I give the reasons in the written speech so you can read it.
Traditionally, we use the Annual Debate for Chairman to report on the activities of their committees. Of course, as Chairman of Finance, I have already done that when I seconded the Budget speech but I would like to say one thing. I have just written yesterday a letter to the newspapers about the foolishness of negative interests (copy attached). I wonder whether everybody in the Government really thought about this because the Council has quite large reserves and very often we have income which comes early and we haven't spent yet. So we put it on deposit. Right now we have something like four hundred million Hong Kong dollars on deposit. Now is the Government or the banks going to charge the ratepayers negative interest? I beg them to think about that.
As Chairman of Urban Council Keep Hong Kong Clean Committee, I would like to say a few words about our present and our next year's campaign. These campaigns, by their very nature, must be educational. We must educate both by exhortation and by example. The idea is to instill a sense of pride in a clean city and countryside so that the ordinary citizen will reprimand his neighbour or his family when they are seen to rubbish the city. For the first time in this year's campaign we have tried to do just that, a considerable difference from previous campaigns which emphasized the prosecution angle. Prosecution of course is necessary and obviously prosecution by itself will not change anyone's attitude, and it is the attitude that has to be changed. The hit tune produced by GIS and their advertising agents with the generous help of Alan TAM, who gave his services free of charge, summarizes our new approach which we will also carry forward into this year's campaign. In addition to this, for the first time we have involved commercial interests and the Armed Forces, both of whom have given us great help, especially the Armed Forces who cleaned places we normally can't get to, and we hope to carry on this cooperation, and hopefully widen it in the private sector. I am very grateful to all my colleagues because with their help we have been able to again agree on a very large budget for this coming year's campaign, and I would hope that Central Government will follow our example and that of the Regional Council, who also have contributed the same amount as
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 126 of 185
243
last year, and again pitch in because we do need the money for this campaign. I want to take this opportunity of thanking both the USD and the RSD for all the very hard work they put into last year's campaign (when I speak of last year's campaign of course it is still going on because we live by the financial year and not by the calendar year). They have worked wonders and their help in organizing the many special events is especially appreciated. I also want to thank the Education Department for working hard to disseminate the Clean Hong Kong message in schools, and I am especially pleased to hear that now they are working on a proper teaching curriculum which goes into detail on the production and disposal of litter which I hope will reinforce our message to the
younger generation.
Sad to say, although we have some success in keeping our environment clean of litter and garbage, on the whole the pollution picture has worsened quite considerably in the last few years and is now worse than I can ever remember. All the alarms I sounded when I was a member of EPCOM and chairing the Special Air Pollution Committee seem to have gone unheeded. We are getting closer and closer to catastrophe, and it is really galling to find that Government again has commissioned a study on sewage disposal when such a study was made more than ten years ago and nothing whatsoever was done in spite of recommendations by EPCOM for actions to be taken then. Now the situation is ten years worse and will no doubt cost three or four times the amount of money it would have cost if our advice had been followed, and in the meantime our harbour right outside this building stinks like a sewer and many of our beaches have become unuseable. Although that is a very large problem, our air pollution is a much worse problem. Particulate pollution, which is the most dangerous kind, is well above world limits, mainly because of building and reclamation activities which are not properly controlled, but also because of our badly maintained fleet of diesel taxis, mini buses, and other buses and trucks belching particulate smoke into our atmosphere, and our noise pollution is among the worst, if not the worst, in the world. And yet Government kowtows to pig farmers on waste disposal, to oil companies on air pollution, to the construction industry on noise pollution. It is time these vested interest minorities are told by the majority to go and drown in their own pollution and that Government is told 'For God's sakes stop pussyfooting around and do something!'
The problem I have today is that there is so much more to talk about. For instance, I would like to talk about Government Planning in Hong Kong (a contradiction in terms!) which produces blunders like the Lion Rock Tunnel, the lack of parking for container transport, a second Cross Harbour Tunnel without the necessary feeder roads, the juxtaposition of industry with residential accommodation in Junk Bay producing environmental hazards for the intended population (not to mention a huge waste tip next door which means our garbage lorries will be forced to run through the centre of town all day). I would like to talk about the horrendous lack of supervision and control at the building
-
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.