1996 — Page 344

Page 344 of 498

388

HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

Government helps out by effecting rigorous and comprehensive control measures with determination.

In view of the above, I would like to urge our Chairman and the Urban Services Department to continue following up the issue with the government departments concerned. In this connection, we should not cherish any other illusions. Instead, we should actively reflect the problem to Mr. TUNG Chee-hwa, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong SAR, so that he can fully understand the social disturbances caused by illegal hawking problems and will therefore study and formulate long-term policies to tackle the problems of unemployment and illegal hawkers when drawing up his administration plan. Besides, the Council should conduct a comprehensive review of the policy on illegal hawkers in the light of the employment situation of Hong Kong.

The second issue is the problem of cheap labour caused by the contracting-out schemes of the Urban Council.

In recent years, the Council has gradually contracted out various cleansing services of the streets, markets, parks, and toilets through pilot schemes in order to improve the management of these services and to cut expenses. These services were undertaken by civil servants directly employed by the Urban Services Department as Workmen II. Under the new arrangement, these services were normally contracted out through open tenders whereby tenderers with the lowest bids would be awarded the contracts (of course, they had to meet other requirements under the contracts apart from making the lowest bids). As a result, the Urban Council was able to save $44.8 million for the years of 1994, 1995, and 1996. However, we cannot just look at the savings we make, but have to face up to the social phenomenon and social problem of 'sweated labour' caused by these thrifty measures of the Urban Council. A recent proposal even advocates that the Urban Council should privatize the management of markets. In view of this, I would like to urge the Council to conduct a comprehensive review of the problems of cheap labour, public image, and quality of service caused by the contracting-out schemes of the Council.

In the first place, I fully agree that we should make the best use of public money and that it is our responsibility to introduce rigorous thrifty measures to cut down the expenditure of the Urban Council. However, resources should be economized through better management, improved effectiveness, and higher efficiency. We should not use cheap labour to replace jobs that earn a normal salary income. This is not the true essence of economy but is, in fact, an extremely uncivilized way to cut down wages through contracting-out measures.

Secondly, a labour dispute of last year that involved pay arrears of over $1 million by a cleansing contractor reveals that the employees of these contractors are mostly over-aged but under-paid with long working hours and few holidays. There are also the problems of overdue salary payment and pay arrears. As for the Workmen II of the Urban Services Department, they are civil

Page 344 of 498

£198