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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 107 of 115
203
Being the representative of the Yau Tsim and Mong Kok District Board, I have the responsibility to reflect the views of the District Board members and residents of that district on the services provided by the Urban Council. Since there is little town planning in this old urban district, commercial, industrial and food business establishments are concentrated in this area where the population is ever increasing, thus giving rise to many problems of environmental health. Most of the residents' complaints involve illegal hawking, illegal extension of business area by food premises, nuisance caused by dripping water and cleansing of streets. As a member of the Urban Council responsible for environmental hygiene, I would refer the complaints to the Department but so far the answers and results I got were mostly frustrating and unsatisfactory. The problems under complaint still exist and there is no marked improvement. Under such circumstances, we feel frustrated and ashamed. That the problems under complaint cannot be solved is mainly due to insufficient manpower and financial resources. The Urban Council is financially autonomous and its annual expenditure amounts to billions of dollars (the estimated expenditure of this year is about $6.3 billion), but are the resources allocated to environmental health and hawker management sufficient? I strongly recommend that the Council should review the existing proportions in the allocation of financial resources and make necessary adjustments in order to meet public needs in the most essential urban services.
Mr. Chairman, with these remarks, I support the motion.
MR. JUSTIN WONG CHUN (in Cantonese): Mr. Chairman, today, I am going to present with nervousness, my speech for this year's Annual Convention Debate. I am nervous not because I have to stand up and speak, but since I was the last member appointed to this Council, I certainly do not have as much experience and wisdom as all my colleagues here. During my short term of office in the Council, I have noticed that a lot of work done by the Council is well-known to and welcomed by the public, while there is also plenty of room for improvement in many aspects. Some of my points have already been mentioned by other colleagues and I don't want to repeat, so I will just highlight a few of them here.
The first point is about the hawker problem. At the Annual Convention Debate last year, I mentioned that the hawker problem was getting from bad to worse. In a number of streets in the urban area, only the police have the power to arrest hawkers, but in public housing estates, the duty of prosecuting hawkers is carried out by staff of the Housing Department while the Urban Services Department has no such power at all. Enforcement officers and hawkers played the game of 'hide and seek' last year and will go on playing in the foreseeable future. I think that empowering USD staff to prosecute unlicensed hawkers is the best solution to the problem. Besides, most of the unlicensed hawkers do their business outside the operation hours of the Hawker Control Force, so the Council should consider deploying the Hawker Control Force to carry out its duties late at night. Moreover, frequent patrol on the streets and static patrol are also effective ways of solving the problem of unlicensed hawkers.
Secondly, I would like to talk about contracting out jobs to the private sector. At present, the government has contracted out the operation of some tunnels, car parks and parking meters to private firms and this measure proves to be quite effective.
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Therefore, I think that the Urban Council should contract out more cleansing services and (management of) venues to private companies. This has the advantage of being more flexible and cost-effective. Moreover, modern management techniques can be brought in from the private sector to the benefit of the public.
The third subject I would like to discuss is the Urban Council's licensing procedure. The public has been complaining for years that it takes too long for the Council to issue various types of licences including General Restaurant Licence, Light Refreshment Restaurant Licence and Liquor Licence, etc. Actually, the Council has been wrongly blamed. It is mainly responsible for seeing to it that the hygienic requirements are met but applications for these licences have to be approved by other government departments such as the Fire Services Department, the Lands Department, the Buildings Department, the Environmental Protection Department and the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. In this respect, the Urban Council has responsibilities but no power. In other words, it has no rights but obligations. Therefore, I think that certain permits should be issued by the departments concerned for licence applicants. In the event that the owner of the business cannot produce a certain department's permit, then he should be prosecuted by that department. Could the Urban Council refuse to issue a licence to a restaurant because it does not pay taxes to the Inland Revenue Department? It could not. As for the licensing requirements, many of them need to be changed. In the past few months, the Urban Services Appeals Board refuted the decisions on several licensing cases and objected to the Council's refusal to issue Liquor Licences to certain applicants. For this reason, relevant legislation should be clearly defined with explanations to avoid refutation by the Appeal Court. For example, it is still lawful for the public to bring liquor to unlicensed bars. Teenagers under 18 may also enter these places, but whether they use liquor or not can only be detected during licence inspections. Hence, such legislation should be revised.
Fourthly, the work of the Urban Council and the Urban Services Department should be streamlined as far as possible. At present, U.S.D. has a strength of over 16,000, comparable to that of an international corporation. Therefore, shouldn't we review whether we should allow the number of our civil servants to keep on growing? Shouldn't we privatize certain kinds of work or have some divisions merged? Are there many redundant staff? Isn't there some way we can increase our staff's efficiency? Increasing efficiency will lead to problems in environmental protection. In this connection, has the Department considered using electricity as the power for the numerous vehicles in its fleet? Maybe, we can use LP Gas instead. Taxis in Thailand and Japan have been using LP Gas for a long time. Can we follow suit? As for the streamlining of the Council's work, the Standing Orders of the Urban Council have not been amended for decades. We should give it the necessary amendments to keep abreast of the times. Besides, are there not too many committees? Will it be possible to merge some of our working parties and committees? In many cases, the same committee paper is presented to more than one committee and working party and every member has the chance of being the chairman or vice-chairman of certain committees or working parties. Is this really necessary? Some members left the meeting half an hour after it began and then at the next meeting, they again raised the questions which had already been discussed at the previous meeting. Should this occur? I believe
Page 107 of 115
Page 107 of 115
202
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 107 of 115
203
Being the representative of the Yau Tsim and Mong Kok District Board, I have the responsibility to reflect the views of the District Board members and residents of that district on the services provided by the Urban Council. Since there is little town planning in this old urban district, commercial, industrial and food business establishments are concentrated in this area where the population is ever increasing, thus giving rise to many problem of environmental health. Most of the residents' complaints involve illegal hawking, illegal extension of business area by food premises, nuisance caused by dripping water and cleansing of streets. As a member of the Urban Council responsible for environmental hygiene, I would refer the complaints to the Department but so far the answers and results I got were mostly frustrating and unsatisfactory. The problems under complaint still exist and there is no marked improvement. Under such circumstances, we feel frustrated and ashamed. That the problems under complaint cannot be solved is mainly due to insufficient manpower and financial resources. The Urban Council is financially autonomous and its annual expenditure amounts to billions of dollars (the estimated expenditure of this year is about $6.3 billion), but are the resources allocated to environmental health and hawker management sufficient? I strongly recommand that the Council should review the existing proportions in the allocation of financial resources and make necessary adjustments in order to meet public needs in the most essential urban services.
Mr. Chairman, with these remarks, I support the motion.
MR. JUSTEIN WONG CHUN (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, today, I am going to present with nervousness, my speech for this year's Annual Conventional Debate. I am nervous not because I have to stand up and speak, but since I was the last member appointed to this Council, I certainly do not have as much experience and wisdom as all my colleagues here. During my short term of office in the Council, I have noticed that a lot of work done by the Council is well-known to and welcomed by the public, while there is also plenty of room for improvement in many aspects. Some of my points have already been mentioned by other colleagues and I don't want to repeat, so I will just highlight a few of them here.
The first point is about the hawker problem. At the Annual Conventional Debate last year, I mentioned that the hawker problem was getting from bad to worse. In a number of streets in the urban area, only the police have the power to arrest hawkers, but in public housing estates, the duty of prosecuting hawkers is carried out by staff of the Housing Department while the Urban Services Department has no such power at all. Enforcement officers and hawkers played the game of 'hide and seek' last year and will go on playing in the forseeable future. I think that empowering USD staff to prosecute unlicensed hawkers is the best solution to the problem. Besides, most of the unlicensed hawkers do their business outside the operation hours of the Hawker Control Force, so the Council should consider deploying the Hawker Control Force to carry out its duties late at night. Moreover, frequent partol on the streets and static patrol are also effective ways of solving the problem of unlicensed hawkers.
Secondly, I would like to take about contracting out jobs to the private sector. At present, the government has contracted out the operation of some tunnels, car parks and parking meters to private firms and this measures proves to be quite effective.
Page 107 of 115
Therefore, I think that the Urban Council should contract out more cleansing services and (management of) venues to private companies. This has the advantage of being more flexible and cost effective. Moreover, modern management techniques can be brought in from the private sector to the benefit of the public.
The third subject I would like to discuss is the Urban Council's licensing procedure. The public has been complaining for years that it takes too long for the Council to issue various types of licences including General Restaurant Licence, Light Refreshment Restaurant Licence and Liquor Licence, etc. Actually, the Council has been wrongly blamed. It is mainly responsible for seeing to it that the hygienic requirements are met but applications for these licences have to be approved by other government departments such as the Fire Services Department, the Lands Departments, the Buildings Department, the Environmental Protection Department and the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. In this respect the Urban Council has responsibilities but no power. In other words, it has no rights but obligations. Therefore, I think that certain permits should be issued by the departments concerned for licence applicants. In the event that the owner of the business cannot produce a certain department's permit, then he should be prosecuted by that department. Could the Urban Council refuse to issue a licence to a restaurant because it does not pay taxes to the Inland Revenue Department? It could not. As for the licensing requirements, many of them need to be changed. In the past few months, the Urban Services Appeals Board refuted the decisions on several licencing cases and objected to the Council's refusal to issue Liquor Licences to certain applicants. For this reason, relevant legislation should be clearly defined with explanations to avoid refutation by the Appeal Court. For example, it is still lawful for the public to bring liquor to unlicenced bars. Teenagers under 18 may also enter these places, but whether they use liquor or not can only be detected during lincence inspections. Hence, such legislation should be revised.
Fourthly, the work of the Urban Council and the Urban Services Department should be streamlined as far as possible. At present, U.S.D. has a strength of over 16 000, comparable to that of an international corporation. Therefore, shouldn't we review whether we should allow the number of our civil servants to keep on growing? Shouldn't we privatize certain kinds of work or have some divisions merged? Are there many redundant staff? Isn't there some way we can increase our staff's efficiency? Increasing efficiently will lead to problems in environmental protection. In this connection, has the Department considered using electricity as the power for the numerous vehicles in its fleet? Maybe, we can use LP Gas instead. Taxis in Thailand and Japan have been using LP Gas for a long time. Can we follow suit? As for the streamlining of the Council's work, the Standing Orders of the Urban Council has not been amended for decades. We should give it the necessary amendments to keep abreast with the times. Besides, are there not too many committees? Will it be possible to merge some of our working parties and committees? In many cases the same committee paper is presented to more than one committees and working parties and every member has the chance of being the chairman or vice-chairman of certain committees or working parties. Is this really necessary? Some members left the meeting half an hour after it began and then at the next meeting, they again raised the questions which had already been discussed at the previous meeting. Should this occur? I believe
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