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have any specific aims and a Five-Year Plan, that cannot be accomplished. What is more difficult to accomplish is the computerization of the whole Department. I am sorry to say that the Regional Council has surpassed us in this respect. It is strange that while the Urban Services Department has a staff of over 16,000, information shows that the number of personal computers available is only about 800, which is smaller than the number of vehicles in the Departmental fleet. With such a small number of computers available, it is impossible to achieve high efficiency.
Mr. Chairman, I think that our most pressing task is to put an end to this practice of sticking to old ways. In July last year, I proposed that a Five-Year Plan be drawn up for each Select Committee and the proposal was supported by all Colleagues. I think that in this process of self-examination and drawing up a forward-looking plan, the most important thing is, in fact, to show the public that we spend public funds properly, that the Council functions cost-effectively and that Urban Councillors can perform their monitoring functions effectively. If we fail to do this as soon as possible, I am afraid that we will soon lose public support. I am very glad to see that the four culture-related Committees have already started their Five-Year Plans. It seems that the other Committees, however, have not yet started. Mr. Chairman, I hope that this is the last time for the Statement of Aims to be presented in such a format and that the Statement to be adopted next year will be a clearly written Five-Year Plan. I have just made it clear that I cannot support the Statement of Aims for 1996/97 in full. Therefore, I will cast an abstention vote later.
Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, I would also like to talk about the question of transition. In fact, we are very concerned about the following: First, can we continue to serve on the Council after 1997? No doubt our political career is important, but I am more concerned and worried about the transition of the Council itself. In the run-up to 1997, can we prove the Council's worth to the public? Among the elections of the three-tier Councils, the Urban Council election had the lowest voting rate. I can see that members of the public do not feel the importance of the Council and appear to be indifferent to it. Actually, the Urban Council is the only Council that has policy-making power and financial autonomy. The relationship between the Council and the Central Government is specified in the Memorandum of Administrative Arrangements signed in 1973. After going over the Memorandum recently, I noticed that it may be necessary for us to review it because it was drawn up more than 20 years ago and many of its provisions are outdated and a number of provisions are hindering our present work. For example, for every capital works project, we have to cooperate with the Architectural Services Department and pay them construction cost. Such arrangements have resulted in delays of all our projects, higher costs, inflexibility and difficulty in achieving cost-effectiveness. Another problem lies with the accounting system. As the Urban Services Department is a government department, it adopts the cash-basis accounting system. However, this cannot reflect our real assets and liabilities. The collections of the Museum of Art, for example, are some of the Council's assets, but their values are not stated in the annual Estimates of Expenditures and
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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
have any specific aims and a Five-Year Plan, that cannot be accomplished. What is more difficult to accomplish is the computerization of the whole Department. I am sorry to say that the Regional Council has surpassed us in this respect. It is strange that while the Urban Services Department has a staff of over 16 000, information shows that the number of personal computers available is only about 800, which is smaller than the number of vehicles in the Departmental fleet. With such a small number of computers available, it is impossible to achieve high efficiency.
Mr. Chairman, I think that our most pressing task is to put an end to this practice of sticking to old ways. In July last year, I proposed that a Five-Year Plan be drawn up for each Select Committee and the proposal was supported by all Colleagues. I think that in this process of self-examination and drawing up a forward-looking plan, the most important thing is, in fact, to show the public that we spend public funds properly, that the Council functions cost-effectively and that Urban Councillors can perform their monitoring functions effectively. If we fail to do this as soon as possible, I am afraid that we will soon lose public support. I am very glad to see that the four culture related Committees have already started their Five-Year Plans. It seems that the other Committees, however, have not yet started. Mr. Chairman, I hope that this is the last time for the Statement of Aims to be presented in such a format and that the Statement to be adopted next year will be a clearly written Five-Year Plan. I have just made it clear that I cannot support the Statement of Aims for 1996/97 in full. Therefore, I will cast an abstention vote later.
Mr. Chairman, in conclusion. I would also like to talk about the question of transition. In fact, we are very concerned about the following: First, can we continue to serve on the Council after 1997? No doubt our political career is important, but I am more concerned and worried about the transition of the Council itself. In the run-up to 1997, can we prove the Council's worth to the public? Among the elections of the three-tier Councils, the Urban Council election had the lowest voting rate. I can see that members of the public do not feel the importance of the Council and appear to be indifferent to it. Actually, the Urban Council is the only Council that has policy-making power and financial autonomy. The relationship between the Council and the Central Government is specified in the Memorandum of Administrative Arrangements signed in 1973. After going over the Memorandum recently, I noticed that it may be necessary for us to review it because it was drawn up more than 20 years ago and many of its provisions are outdated and a number of provisions are hindering our present work. For example, for every capital works project, we have to cooperate with the Architectural Services Department and pay them construction cost. Such arrangements have resulted in delays of all our projects, higher costs, inflexibility and difficulty in achieving cost-effectiveness. Another problem lies with the accounting system. As the Urban Services Department is a government department, it adopts the cash- basis accounting system. However, this cannot reflect our real assets and liabilities. The collections of the Museum of Art, for example, are some of the Council's assets, but their values are not stated in the annual Estimates of Expenditures and
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