30 June 2003


Dear Fellow Engineer

National Security (Legislative Provisions) Bill – Follow-up

I write to provide you with more information regarding the consultation of the captioned Bill among Engineers following my e-mail of 26 June 2003. 

You may wish to know that my e-mail of 26 June was sent to some 3,000 Engineers. Responses are continuing to reach me. Several engineers questioned in their responses why I did not conduct a general survey among my electorate. In fact, this is not an option for me as I do not have a full electorate list. It is illegal to use the electorate list provided by the government during the previous election. Besides, it is the HKIE's policy that their membership database is not open to any outside party. Despite this limitation, I was still able to send an e-mail to some 3,000 Engineers (out of 5,999 engineers in the Engineering Functional Constituency electorate) seeking their views on this all important issue. 

For Engineers who read my monthly LegCo News published in Hong Kong Engineer and visit regularly my website should know that I have been asking them to give their views on the issue. In the past few months, the Bills Committee on the National Security (Legislative Provision) Bill has conducted a clause-by-clause examination of the Bill. There are over 105 papers involved during the examination. A clearer picture of the Bill only emerged last week with the completion of the Bills Committee in its scrutiny. Over 100 amendments proposed by LegCo members and over 50 amendments proposed by the government have just been given to Bills Committee members today. It is reported that the government will accept only those amendments involving technicalities. I found that it was the right time to send an invitation to all engineers in my database to give their views on the Bill. So I sent out the e-mail of 26 June to you.

In order to ensure that my consultation can cover the whole electorate, I have written to the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, the Association of Consulting Engineers of Hong Kong and government engineering staff associations to seek their positions on the Bill too. Their views as well as majority of fellow engineers will be important reference for my vote next week.



(signed)
Ir Dr Raymond Ho Chung-tai