1994 — Page 106

HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

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Hong Kong as the competition enhances their sense of responsibility towards food hygiene. Under an award scheme all employees of food premises, irrespective of their ranks have become more aware of the importance of food hygiene. The Health Education Exhibition and Resource Centre is under active planning, and it is envisaged that the public's knowledge about public hygiene will definitely be considerably enhanced in the future. However, success can only be achieved with the support of sufficient manpower provided by the Department. With regard to the recreational activities, this year's Urban Council Fun Day, International Challenge Day, Corporate Games, Urban Council inter-district sports competition and the Hong Kong Urban Council Lion Dance Festival now being held, all sponsored by commercial institutions, were very successful events. The newly-established Sportix is useful in co-ordinating our development of sports and recreational activities. It provides fast and efficient service to the public in respect of booking venues, enrolling in training courses and various activities, and is one of our much appreciated facilities. As regards library facilities, the fully implemented computerization programme has greatly improved our services. It is now time for the Urban Council to give wider publicity to this programme. The Council should take the initiative to intorduce the functions of the computer system as well as other facilities of the Urban Council libraries to schools, community groups and industrial and commercial institutions, and accept on-the- spot enrolments for new library cards. Mobile library vans can also be increase to promote such services. As for cultural affairs, seventeen Principal Musicians of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra complained against the Artistic Director and Assistant Artistic Director a few days ago. I will not say anymore about this matter here, but I hope communications can be improved and the matter settled fairly as soon as possible, so as to avoid impairing the image of the Urban Council. As for the publicity of Urban Council activities, it is hoped the 'City News' can accept advertisers' sponsorship and publish more copies for circulation, so as to effectively publicize the messages of the Urban Council's twelve select committees, promote public participation, improve all sorts of services and achieve the target of ‘Enriching City Life'. Thank you. With these words, I support the motion.

MR. IP KWOK-CHUNG (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman, I am glad to be able to participate in the Annual Conventional Debate during my new term of office. However, I feel sad at the same time because some colleagues have decided not to stand for the election to be held in March this year, and I can say for sure that quite a number of us here will leave the Council on 31 March. As a District Board representative member whose new term of office in the Council has just started, I would like to pay tribute to them for their contribution all these years. Mr. Chris PATTEN, the Governor of Hong Kong, initiated a political reform which involves the direct election of all Councillors. This will change the Council's present composition of appointed members, directly elected members and indirectly elected members, and speed up the emergence of party politics. At the same time the Council will become a statutory body which possesses certain real power and financial autonomy. I am sure this will certainly have an impact on the future Urban Council. The politicization of the Council's day-to-day operation will make the districts vie with each other for the allocation of resources, but what is more important is that, the immaturity of political awareness among the Councillors may

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result in the abuse of resources when they are fighting for the interests of their own political parties. At some District Board meetings, there were incidents in which we saw the interests of a certain party were put before conscience, or even before everything else, and the wishes of the party turned out to be the final decision of the meeting. I sincerely hope that the future Council will be composed of people with different expertise and from different political political parties and district. I also hope it can allow different opinions and has a healthy development rather than being turned into a new political arena dominated by one or two political parties. I am sure this is also something the people in Hong Kong would like to see.

Let me return to practical affairs. It is one of the Council's responsibilities to provide better market services to the public. As Chairman of the Markets and Street Traders Select Committee, I am glad to inform my colleagues and the public that four new markets will be completed this year. All the cooked food centres in the new markets will be air-conditioned, and the existing cooked food centres in Sai Wan Ho, To Kwa Wan and Lockhart Road will also be provided with air-conditioning system. This scheme will gradually be extended to all cooked food centres under the Urban Council. In order to improve market management, the Council has set up market management teams in eleven districts. As regards hawker control, meetings were held on May 1 last year to discuss the General Duties Teams which were responsible for hawker control and the grade of Hawker Control Officer was created. With the creation of the grade the responsibilities of the officers can be defined more clearly and the Council's hawker control policies as well as its specific tasks can be executed more effectively. The Council should urge the Deparmtent to provide more training for the staff of the new grade, adopt a strict management system and upgrade its law-enforcing image, so as to gain greater recognition and support from the public. Last year, the Markets and Street Traders Select Committee allocated an additional $65,000,000 for the employment of 400 additional staff for the Hawker Control Officer grade. The committee will keep on reviewing the adequacy of the staff's equipment in order to cope with increasingly serious problem of illegal hawking.

Looking back on all the Council's issues last year, I think none has aroused more public attention and concern than the noise issue of the Hong Kong Stadium. Although the issue has caused a flood of criticisms, it is gratifying and laudable that some of the Councillors who, mostly on the Stadium's Board of Governors, could take the overall interests of Hong Kong residents as their basis of judgement, and, in the face of pressure, could still take a positive and responsible attitude in their never-ending search for methods of improvement, so that the magnificent Stadium, on which HK$1,000,000,000 was spent, could be fully utilized for public enjoyment. As Urban Councillors, we have to face criticisms from all corners, especially those politicized criticisms, and we are indeed proud of having upheld the above-mentioned principle. Frankly speaking, to agree to ban concerts or other music events from the Stadium is the easiest decision to make as it would not incur criticism. But why have members of the Stadium's Board of Governors and the majority of Urban Councillors taken a difficult way instead, and strived to search for other remedial measures? Were they after their own benefits? The discerning eyes of the people of Hong Kong should have a clear answer to these questions.

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