Raymond's Personal Express
Ir Dr The Hon Raymond Ho Chung-tai 何鍾泰博士工程師
Representative of the Engineering Functional Constituency of the Legislative Council

Most sincerely thank you for your support in the 2004 Legislative Council Election. I am honoured to be re-elected as your LegCo representative and am committed to strive for the well-being of fellow engineers and our profession as promised in my election platform.

New challenges

There are 21 new faces in the Legislative Council, including a few radical voices. It is widely expected that a new political landscape will emerge in the legislature with the division of the pro-democracy and pro-government camps of 25 and 27 members respectively. The new political situation also heralded the transformation of the Breakfast Group of Independents into “The Alliance”, a newly established 5-member group of independent legislators including myself, which will wield a crucial influence on vote results in the legislature.

Taking an active role in the legislature, I have signed up for the following panels: Constitutional affairs, Economic Services, Planning, Land and Works, Transport and Environmental Affairs. I am also a member of the House Committee, Finance Committee, Establishment Subcommittee, Public Works Subcommittee (PWSC) and Subcommittee on Matters Relating to Railways. I hope to keep the chairmanship of the PWSC. This requires the support of other parties as what I enjoyed in the past.

Meeting with Chief Executive

Shortly after my re-election, I and 5 other independent LegCo members met with the Chief Executive Mr Tung Chee Hwa on 17 September 2004 . At the meeting, I asked for Mr Tung's urgent attention to ensure the early implementation of paragraph 38 of his 2004 Policy Address. The Works Group departments should be provided with the recurrent funding as promised as soon as possible. In addition, the government should dish out more Category B and Category C projects to ensure a steady volume of capital works projects being taken in the future. I also strongly urged him to commence as soon as possible the 160 projects worth $20 billion previously undertaken by the two abolished municipal councils.

I also opined that the $6 billion proceeds from the securitisation of 5 government-owned tunnels and the Tsing Ma Bridge and another $20 billion bond issuance successfully launched recently must be used for infrastructure projects other than or in addition to the annual amount of $29 billion already earmarked. The additional infrastructure investment will spur our economy and create employment. On the other hand, it is imperative for the government to take initiatives to help local construction and engineering sectors to tap into the Mainland market.

I raised with him the civil service's concerns about Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). Government's push for PPP arrangement for existing projects and facilities has caused anxiety among civil service as their implementation might cost them jobs affecting their livelihood. Their fears have escalated when a candidate tried to capitalise on the issue during the recent LegCo Election. While PPPs take various forms ranging from Design and Operate, BOT to privatisation, PFI to corporatisation etc, they are not panaceas to all the government's problems. Take the Shatin Water Treatment Plant as an example. The government must not simply evaluate the project on its own merit without addressing the worries of over 4,000 existing staff. Government's lack of transparency and its failure in providing dialogue has caused further distrust and apprehension of the staff. The Secretary for the Environment, Transport and Works has so far refused to meet the staff concerned. To minimise the impact of PPPs on existing staff, I believe that the government should adopt Public Finance Initiatives (PFIs), a form of PPP, to new projects.

I also drew Mr Tung's attention to the grievances from the Resident Site Staff concerning the experience gained with the two railway corporations MTRC and KCRC not being recognised when they apply to take up supervisory employment for government projects. This is very unreasonable, as railway experience is very substantial engineering experience. I suggested that this anomaly arising from government's indiscriminate tightening up of the criteria for awarding increments be rectified immediately.

During the meeting, I asked Mr Tung to re-consider my earlier suggestion, made in early September last year when I met state leaders, that he should head a delegation consisting of 60 LegCo members, regardless their political orientation, to visit Beijing in order to strengthen the communication between the Central Government and the local legislature. On the subject of implementation of Article 23 of the Basic Law, I was of the view that he should give priority to economic development first and should not re-introduce the Bill to LegCo during the remaining part of his term.

Letter to Financial Secretary

At the commencement of the new legislative session in October, I wrote to Mr Henry Tang Yang-yen drawing his attention to the persisting high unemployment rate in the local construction sector in Hong Kong . The jobless rate of the construction industry stays at 16.3%. There are over 300,000 practitioners including professionals, technicians and workers in the industry. Over 1 million people are at stake if we take their family members into account. It is imperative for the government to implement more public works projects to revive the industry. I suggested that the government might follow the examples of some foreign countries in increasing more public works projects during slowing economies with a view to creating more employment opportunities and saving construction industry. Mr Tang was also asked to consider raising more money for infrastructure development through bond issuance. By doing so, the government could capitalise the resources of the private sector to finance infrastructure facilities which are essential to future development and improve the quality of life.

Registered Professional Engineers (Building Services)

Recently, I wrote to Mr Marco Wu Moon-hoi, Director of Buildings urging him (1) to issue an AP/RSE Practice Note to require all submissions of building services works to be certified by R.P.E (BS); (2) to immediately set up a working group to study a registration system for building services engineers. In fact, Mr C M Leung, former Director of Buildings, wrote to me on 18 December 2001 to confirm the setting up of a small group. For the purpose of ensuring public health and public safety, there is strong support for the setting up of a registration system for building services engineers and I have made repeated recommendations to the Buildings Department that a working group be formed to study the matter. These views were also clearly reflected at the joint APSEC/BSE meeting held on 21 May 2004 , which I attended with HKIE representatives.

Weekly meeting session

My weekly meeting session with HKIE members has resumed from the first Thursday of October 2004. Please feel free to call on me at the HKIE Headquarters from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. every Thursday. For updates on my LegCo work, you are welcome to visit my website at http://www.raymondhochungtai.org.hk .