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Australia, SS 308 from Singapore, etc. Achieving certification by any of these standards organizations is seen as recognition of quality products or services. In Hong Kong, many organizations in the private sector, and I believe, at least one government department are reviewing or adopting ISO 9000. The Urban Council can be viewed as a very scale service organization covering diversified areas of service all of which require stringent process control in order to meet the rising expectation of the public. I strongly advocate that this Council considers the adoption of standards such as ISO 9000 or specifically ISO 9002 for the servicing sector wherever appropriate to ensure the quality management of our services as well as of our contractors' services.
We are working towards fulfilling our Statement of Aims. The successful application of quality management provides opportunities for motivation of staff, improved service performance, public satisfaction, productivity, cost reduction, better management of the social processes involved in a service, and eventually the raising of the public's perception of the Council's image, culture and performance.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the assistance and service provided by our Department and Secretariat. I look forward to working with them and my fellow Councillors in the achievement of this Council's Statement of Aims for 1993/94.
With these works, Mr. Chairman, I have the pleasure to support the motion.
CHAIRMAN (in English):-Thank you. Next speaker, Ronald POON.
MR. RONALD POON CHO-YIU (in English):-Mr. Chairman, firstly I must apologize for the quality of my voice. I am not trying to masquerade Winston Churchill or Louie Armstrong to improve my delivery. It is because I have a cold and some over indulgence of singing last night. Mr. Chairman, this year the scenery has changed somewhat for my writing of the annual convention debate paper. Instead of having a port in the terrace of my home, I had a Mai Tai Cocktail in hand over-looking the Andaman Sea from a beach front balcony in Phuket when I began to write. Roy Spencer no longer need to give me a Christmas present this year of thirty odd past papers as out of politeness, I sat through the two days' delivery of last year's papers. Instead through the generosity of the Secretariat I won a gift during the Christmas Cocktail, a rubber anti-slip bath mat. The Secretaries being kind hearted souls probably think I needed it in the slippery floor of the Urban Council Chamber. The over protective attitude was much appreciated though totally unnecessary, as not much troubled water was thrown in the Chambers during last year to make the floor slippery. If anything only a few tears were shed for the Governor's proposal to abandon the appointed system. I shall come back to that in a moment. First of all this year I like to review the consequences of the proposals I made in my last year's paper. The most obvious consequences of my speech last year was a very favourable write up in one of the English newspapers about the quality of the English used but only a little was mentioned about what I considered to be very important and constructive proposals for the improvement of the works of the Urban Council, namely, the abolition of the monthly Urban Council meeting and Council members taking up individual projects to enlarge the scope of our Council's work.
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Apparently my suggestion to abolish the monthly meeting had sent shock waves through the more senior ranks and the Secretariat ending up in a compromise of retaining the meeting with all its formalities but adding a motion debate to provide some stimulation in the second part of the meeting. While the introduction of the motion debate is a welcome act, the retention of the formalities leaves much to be desired. I appreciate that presentation of amendments to the statues are necessary and they have been very brief in the meetings but the questions and answers session, which I understand does give opportunities for our members to raise matters of concern to ourselves as well as to the public, is still being time consuming and ineffective. As a further improvement, can I suggest that the Chairman of the Select Committee answers in a similar manner as the one who poses the question i.e. by simply saying I give the answer as printed in the paper without reading out the answers. After all both Councillors and the public have been supplied with the printed answers. This will save a tremendous amount of time. With the addition of the motion debate, the time for the monthly meeting is now almost double that of the past and the attendance rate does dwindle towards the last hour of the meeting.
My other suggestion last year of Councillors taking up individual projects seemed to have some form of success. Other than myself, having taken up the co-ordination of the Toilet Design Competition and the organization of a UC gala dinner, there is MAN Sai-cheong orchestrating the greening of Hong Kong and Carlye TSUI co-ordinating the computerization of the library services etc. I hope there will be more efforts in this direction in the coming year.
Having a Confucian attitude in life, I find it hard to criticize anything my appointor does. Although silence is the most unbearable form of protest, I feel that since the Englishmen we are dealing with are no longer of the same breed as the ones I used to know, they may simply take silence as consent. Therefore, I must take this opportunity to moan a little on the Governor's proposal to abandon the appointed system in the membership of our Council.
Having foreseen the possibility that the Patten proposal would have been flogged to death by the time it comes to my turn to speak, I decided to present my comments on the issue through an analogy to ensure a breath of fresh air in the atmosphere of this Chamber. In any event, the gentlemanly way to have a moan is, I think, to use an analogy because a direct hit is rather unbecoming and may be too devastating for any constructive purposes. Let us take the case of our philharmonic orchestra. With the permission, of course, of the Chairman of the phil, my colleague, the Hon. Marvin CHEUNG. It is, of course, a western based operation like our present system of government. Like our present system of government, the highest paid players are employed from outside of Hong Kong and are mostly expatriates though in recent years a slow process of
Page 94 of 126
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Australia, SS 308 from Singapore, etc. Achieving certification by any of these standards organizations is seen as recognition of quality products or services. In Hong Kong, many organizations in the private sector, and I believe, at least one government department are reviewing or adopting ISO 9000. The Urban Council can be viewed as a very scale service organization covering diversified areas of service all of which require stringent process control in order to meet the rising expectation of the public. I strongly advocate that this Council considers the adoption of standards such as ISO 9000 or specifically ISO 9002 for the servicing sector wherever appropriate to ensure the quality management of our services as well as of our contractors' services.
We are working towards fulfilling our Statement of Aims. The successful application of quality management provides opportunities for motivation of staff, improved service performance, public satisfaction, productivity, cost reduction, better management of the social processes involved in a service, and eventually the raising of the public's perception of the Council's image, culture and performance.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the assistance and service provided by our Department and Secretariat. I look forward to working with them and my fellow Councillors in the achievement of this Council's Statement of Aims for 1993/94.
With these works, Mr. Chairman, I have the pleasure to support the motion.
CHAIRMAN (in English):-Thank you. Next speaker, Ronald POON.
MR. RONALD POON CHO-YIU (in English):-Mr. Chairman, firstly I must apologize for the quality of my voice. I am not trying to masquerade Winston Churchill or Louie Armstrong to improve my delivery. It is because I have a cold and some over indulgence of singing last night. Mr. Chairman, this year the scenery has changed somewhat for my writing of the annual convention debate paper. Instead of having a port in the terrace of my home, I had a Mai Tai Cocktail in hand over-looking the Andamen Sea from a beach front balcony in Phuket when I began to write. Roy Spencer no longer need to give me a Christmas present this year of thirty odd past papers as out of politeness, I sat through the two days' delivery of last year's papers. Instead through the generosity of the Secretariat I won a gift during the Christmas Cocktail, a rubber anti-slip bath mat. The Secretaries being kind hearted souls probably think I needed it in the slippery floor of the Urban Council Chamber. The over protective attitude was much appreciated though totally unnecessary, as not much troubled water was thrown in the Chambers during last year to make the floor slippery. If anything only a few tears were shed for the Governor's proposal to abandon the appointed system. I shall come back to that in a moment. First of all this year I like to review the consequences of the proposals I made in my last year's paper. The most obvious consequences of my speech last year was a very favourable write up in one of the English newspapers about the quality of the English used but only a little was mentioned about what I
Page 94 of 126
T
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 94 of 126
165
considered to be very important and constructive proposals for the improvement of the works of the Urban Council, namely, the abolition of the monthly Urban Council meeting and Council members taking up individual projects to enlarge the scope of our Council's work. Apparently my suggestion to abolish the monthly meeting had sent shock waves through the more senior ranks and the Secretariat ending up in a compromise of retaining the meeting with all its formalities but adding a motion debate to provide some stimulation in the second part of the meeting. While the introduction of the motion debate is a welcome act, the retention of the formalities leaves much to be desired. I appreciate that presentation of amendments to the statues are necessary and they have been very brief in the meetings but the questions and answers session, which I understand does give opportunities for our members to raise matters of concern to ourselves as well as to the public, is still being time consuming and ineffective. As a further improvement, can I suggest that the Chairman of the Select Committee answers in a similar manner as the one who poses the question i.e. by simply saying I give the answer as printed in the paper without reading out the answers. After all both Councillors and the public have been supplied with the printed answers. This will save a tremendous amount of time. With the addition of the motion debate, the time for the monthly meeting is now almost double that of the past and the attendance rate does dwindle towards the last hour of the meeting.
My other suggestion last year of Councillors taking up individual projects seemed to have some form of success. Other than myself, having taken up the co-ordination of the Toilet Design Competition and the organization of a UC gala dinner, there is MAN Sai-cheong orchestrating the greening of Hong Kong and Carlye TSUI co-ordinating the computerization of the library services etc. I hope there will be more efforts in this direction in the coming year.
Having a confucian attitude in life, I find it hard to criticize anything my appointor does. Although silence is the most unbearable form of protest, I feel that since the Englishmen we are dealing with are no longer of the same breed as the ones I used to know, they may simply take silence as consent. Therefore, I must take this opportunity to moan a little on the Governor's proposal to abandon the appointed system in the membership of our Council.
Having foreseen the possibility that the Patten proposal would have been flogged to death by the time it comes to my turn to speak, I decided to present my comments on the issue through an analogy to ensure a breath of fresh air in the atmosphere of this Chamber. In any event, the gentlemanly way to have a moan is, I think, to use an analogy because a direct hit is rather unbecoming and may be too devastating for any constructive purposes. Let us take the case of our philharmonic orchestra. With the permission, of course, of the Chairman of the phil, my colleague, the Hon. Marvin CHEUNG. It is, of course, a western based operation like our present system of government. Like our present system of government, the highest paid players are employed from outside of Hong Kong and are mostly expatriates though in recent years a slow process of
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