A 03/04-7
| Subsidiary Legislation / Instruments | L.N. No. |
|---|---|
| Pension Benefits Ordinance (Established Offices) (Amendment) Order 2003 | 244/2003 |
| 1. No.22 | - | Report of the Board of Trustees for Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund for the period from 1 April 2002 to 31 March 2003 |
| (to be presented by Secretary for Home Affairs)
| ||
| 2. No.23 | - | Secretary for Home Affairs IncorporatedAudited Statement of Accounts and Auditor's Report for the year ended 31 March 2003 |
| (to be presented by Secretary for Home Affairs) | ||
| (a) | whether it has assessed if the project's scale will reduce to only a few number of developers capable of bidding, and will result in restricting the choice of bidders, an undesirable tender price, and the Government placing itself in an unfavorable position in negotiating the details of the project with the successful bidder; of the reasons for not considering splitting the project and inviting separate tenders, or putting up the part of the land earmarked for commercial uses for sale by tender, so as to use the land sale proceeds for developing recreational and cultural facilities;
|
| (b) | as the culture and art sectors have expressed concern that assigning the development of the cultural district to profit-oriented developer(s) might eventually turn it into a place unworthy of its name, whether it plans to conduct a new round of consultation with these sectors on the approach to be adopted for the development; if so, of the details of the consultation; if not, the reasons for that; and
|
| (c) | of the monitoring measures in place to avoid the project deviating from its original objectives, in terms of construction and long-term operation? |
| (a) | whether it knows if a Hong Kong resident holding an identity card, be it the Hong Kong permanent identity card or the Hong Kong identity card, and a valid national passport can take advantage of the Scheme to enter and exit the Mainland for business travel; and
|
| (b) | if Hong Kong residents holding a Hong Kong identity card and a valid national passport cannot benefit from the Scheme, whether the Administration knows if the Mainland authorities will introduce a similar scheme for these Hong Kong residents to travel between Hong Kong and the Mainland? |
| (a) | it has assessed if the authorities have acted in accordance with and adhered to the Paris Principles in the appointment of the chairperson and members of EOC; if it has, of the assessment results;
|
| (b) | it will follow other countries' practice of formulating codes requiring statutory organizations responsible for human rights affairs to have adequate transparency, impartiality and accountability in their operations; and
|
| (c) | it has plans to take measures to safeguard the reputation of EOC and restore public confidence in EOC? |
| (a) | of the progress in streamlining bond issuance procedures; whether the authorities have plans to introduce measures for enhancing the work in this respect; if they have, of the details;
|
| (b) | of the incentives and related measures to attract local and overseas institutions and enterprises to issue bonds in Hong Kong; and
|
| (c) | whether it has plans or measures to develop Hong Kong into a centre for China's foreign currency national bonds and for Mainland enterprises to issue foreign currency bonds; if it has, of the details? |
| (a) | of the current ratio of Correctional Services Department ("CSD") staff to prisoners, and how this ratio compares with that five years ago;
|
| (b) | of CSD's expenditure on prisons in the past financial year, broken down into expenses on various items including staff remuneration, facilities and equipment, and the provision of medical services for prisoners, as well as the respective average daily costs of confining a male and a female prisoner in the year; and
|
| (c) | whether the total expenditure on the confinement of prisoners has increased over the past five years; if so, of the details; if not, the reasons for that? |
| (a) | the total amount of Tun Fu fees paid out over the past three years and, among those payments, the sum paid through contractors of government projects, together with the project name, reasons for paying the fees, amount paid and name(s) of payee(s) in each case;
|
| (b) | the measures in place to ensure that public officers approve Tun Fu fees in accordance with the established criteria; and
|
| (c) | the monitoring measures in place for ensuring that the contractors make full payment of Tun Fu fees to the intended payees? |
| (a) | of the number of accidents involving drink driving and its percentage in all traffic accidents in each of the past three years; and
|
| (b) | whether it has assessed if the tightening of the drink driving legislation has helped reduce traffic accidents; if so, of the assessment results; if not, the reasons for that? |
| (a) | whether the Administration and public bodies have so far conducted studies or assessments on the utilization or development of the border areas; if they have, of the timetables and the progress of such studies or assessments; if the studies or assessments have been completed, of the results; if no study or assessment has been conducted, the reasons for that;
|
| (b) | whether the studies or assessments in (a) above include the study that the Chief Executive referred to; if not, of the details of the Chief Executive's study and the government department that is responsible for the study, as well as the timeframe for releasing the findings; and whether the authorities will consider setting up an inter-departmental task force to co-ordinate the study; if not, the reasons for that; and
|
| (c) | whether the authorities, when conducting the studies or assessments mentioned in (a) and (b) above, have taken into account the views of the parties and organizations concerned, such as local and foreign investors, the Guangdong Provincial Government, the Shenzhen Municipal Government and the relevant departments; if so, how their views were collected and assessed; if not, the reasons for that? |
| (a) | if the Hong Kong Trade Development Council ("TDC") engaged private organizations to conduct studies; if it did, of the names of the organizations, the respective names of the studies, the time and amount of money required, and the percentage of the study fees in TDC's annual operation costs;
|
| (b) | how the number of exhibitions organized by TDC each year compared to that of the exhibitions held locally by the private sector during the same year;
|
| (c) | the criteria or assessment mechanism adopted by TDC for deciding whether an exhibition should be organised, and whether they included if private organizations had organized similar exhibitions; and
|
| (d) | among the exhibitions organized by TDC, the number of those which had themes and target audiences similar to those organized by private organizations during the same period? |
| (a) | of the factors the CE normally takes into account before deciding whether to exercise the discretionary power;
|
| (b) | of the number of cases in which the CE exercised the discretionary power in the past three years and, in respect of each case, the name of the retired officer, the public service taken up by him and the reasons for his being allowed to continue to receive his pension; and
|
| (c) | as there have been comments that the continued receipt of pensions by the officers concerned during the periods of their service amounts to double benefits and abuse of public funds, whether the authorities will consider amending the legislation to abolish or tighten up the provisions on the CE's exercise of the discretionary power; if so, of the timeframe for introducing such amendments; if not, the reasons for that? |
| (a) | the reasons for HA's preparing the list and the process of its preparation, as well as the contents of the list;
|
| (b) | HA's timetable to put the list into effect;
|
| (c) | the criteria adopted by HA in determining the drugs to be included in the list;
|
| (d) | if HA will formulate guidelines whereby doctors may prescribe drugs not on the list upon the request of patients; if so, of the details of such guidelines; and
|
| (e) | if HA has assessed whether its expenditure on drugs will be reduced with the adoption of the list; if that is the case, of the reasons for that and the magnitude of the reduction? |
| (a) | it knows if the Guangdong authorities prohibit the private transfer of the licences they issue for private cars from Hong Kong/Macau to enter/exit the Mainland; if so, whether the relevant mainland authorities have discussed with the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region ("HKSAR") how they would curb such illegal transfers or collaborated with the HKSAR Government in this respect, and if there have been discussions or collaboration, of the achievements; and
|
| (b) | the Administration has received any views from the public on issues such as the Guangdong authorities' procedure for granting licences, application eligibility and the adequacy of the number of licences granted to meet the cross-border economic and trade needs; if so, whether it has reflected such views to the Guangdong authorities and the responses it has received; if not, whether the Administration will take the initiatives to look into the issues and present its views to the Guangdong authorities? |
| (a) | of the number of successful bidders that have indicated that their fuel storage facilities would be located outside the territory; and the estimated amount of fuel that these companies will store outside the territory for supply to Hong Kong in the coming year;
|
| (b) | whether it has assessed if the result of this tender exercise will intensify competition in the fuel retail market; if so, of the assessment result;
|
| (c) | given that oil companies can have their fuel storage facilities located outside the territory, of the measures it has in place to ensure that fuel stored in Hong Kong will be maintained at a level sufficient for 30 days' consumption; and
|
| (d) | whether there are agreements between the Government and the oil companies requiring the latter to store a sufficient level of fuel to meet the demand of Hong Kong; if there are, of the details of the agreements? |
| (a) | it has assessed if the savings to be achieved by the cooperation of the two bus companies will provide room for downward adjustment of their bus fares; if it has, of the assessment result; if not, the reasons for that; and
|
| (b) | it has received proposals from the two bus companies concerning bus route rationalization, and whether it will ask the two companies to extend their respective bus routes into the districts which are now served by the other company only, and jointly launch concessionary bus-bus interchange schemes? |
| (a) | step up enforcement actions against copyright piracy activities, so as to prevent the exploitation of this opportunity to fake pirated goods as parallel imports; if it will, of the details; if not, the reasons for that; and
|
| (b) | enhance public education and publicity work, such as educating consumers in distinguishing if articles with embodied computer programs are parallel imports or pirated goods; if it will, of the details? |
| (a) | whether there is any information indicating that the two criminals might have been Mainlanders; if so, whether the exchange of intelligence with the relevant Mainland authorities has been enhanced to crack down on such cross-border crimes; and
|
| (b) | of the measures in place to assist the PLB trade in preventing the recurrence of similar robbery? |
| (a) | of the total number of traffic accidents involving converted goods vehicles in the past three years;
|
| (b) | whether legislation is in place to regulate converted goods vehicles; if so, of the details; and
|
| (c) | whether guidelines on conveyance of goods are issued to drivers of goods vehicles; if so, of the details; if not, whether the authorities will consider issuing such guidelines? |
| (a) | discuss with various franchised bus companies ways to improve their existing fare structures and the setting of full and sectional fares of each bus route according to the distance of the journey, so that the fare structures become more transparent and reasonable and fares paid by each passenger are as fair as possible; and
|
| (b) | examine jointly with various public transport operators the feasibility of issuing daily, weekly and monthly tickets that can be commonly used on various modes of public transport, so as to facilitate local passengers and tourists who need to use them to commute frequently, as well as to alleviate the burden of travelling expenses on them.
|
|
Amendment to Hon Andrew CHENG's motion Hon LAU Kong-wah: (Translation) To delete "in regard to public transport fare system," after "That,"; to add "expeditiously discuss with various public transport operators to seek a 10% reduction of fares across the board and the re-introduction of half-fare travel concessions for students, and to encourage them to co-operate in offering more joint concessions and, in regard to public transport fare system, to" after "this Council urges the Government to"; to delete "and" after "(a) discuss with various franchised bus companies ways to improve their existing fare structures" and substitute with ", expeditiously revise the scale of fares under the Public Bus Services Ordinance as well as reformulate existing guidelines on the setting of fares, and study"; and to add "on condition that the burden on long-haul passengers will not be increased" after "the setting of full and sectional fares of each bus route according to the distance of the journey". Amendment to Hon LAU Kong-wah's amendment Hon Albert HO: (Translation) To delete "and" after "the re-introduction of half-fare travel concessions for students,"; to add "and to expeditiously implement a procedure and mechanism for public transport fare adjustment which allow increase as well as reduction in fares" after "to encourage them to co-operate in offering more joint concessions,"; and to add "and the groupings of routes in the scale" after "expeditiously revise the scale of fares". | |