Page 39 - Public Facilities 2016

PUBLIC FACILITIES

built in the next ten years. It still falls guideline laid down by the Strategic
short of the ten-year production target of Planning Committee, we would as a top
280,000 for the same period. priority make use of the construction sites
for residential development.
Building public housing Thirdly, we accept every piece of
We should not be surprised by the current land allocated to us, whether large and
gap between the planned housing production small, in pursuit of our goal to build more
and the supply target for the next ten years. public housing. The Anderson Road PRH
The imbalance between housing supply and development project is an example of a
demand that has been accumulating over the big site. HD designs the estates with a
years cannot be resolved in the short term. site-specific design approach to maximise
We will not, however, be discouraged by the site development potential in accordance
gap between our current plan and the ten- with the development parameters. Twenty-
year target. On the contrary, we will, with two domestic blocks are constructed to
greater determination, identify land and turn provide a total of 17,917 PRH units.
every site into public housing step by step. Since land resources are limited,
That said, determination alone is not we will not let go of small sites. For
enough; we need resources, mainly example, the Sau Ming Road development
financial, manpower and land resources. provides only 322 units. We give it our
On manpower, the 2016-17 Budget of best all the same. We endeavour to
the Government provides additional increase PRH production and enhance
manpower for HD, including 188 new community facilities at the same time.
civil service posts, to cope with the We will redevelop its community hall,
additional workload arising from the new provide a small library and a study room
public housing production target as well and build a pedestrian footbridge to
as other tasks. Coupled with the posts facilitate pedestrian access to the new
created in the previous four financial community hall and to coordinate with
years, the past five years have seen an the comprehensive pedestrian walkway
increase of 964 posts in the departments system undertaken by the government.
establishment, including 19 directorate Lastly, I would like to quote the recent
posts. advice of the Chairman of HA to HD and
As for funding, the government has his expectation on us, that is, back to
made it clear that it will make sure HA basics.
will have sufficient funding to achieve the On back to basics, I have the
housing production target. Last year the following reflections myself. First, HD
government added about $45 billion for has to adhere to its core responsibilities
further injection into the Housing Reserve. in the construction and maintenance of
Together with the initial injection and housing, that is, to provide no-frills and
interest accrued, the Housing Reserve has safe accommodation, which is conducive
reached a total of $74 billion. to tenants healthy living. Secondly, we
Hence, we can say that we have made have to enhance communication among
suitable arrangements for manpower and all sections, all grades and all levels of
funding. The most critical bottleneck staff in the Department at all times to
is land. We need more land and must ensure that we respond to problems, be
optimise the use of every piece of land they big or small, as a team. These are
to enable us to build more flats where the basics that an organisation with
circumstances permit. nearly 10 000 staff members must not
To make the best use of every piece of forget. Our colleagues fully demonstrated
land, we adopt all viable strategies. First of their team spirit in the past by responding
all, we optimise the development potential to the excess-lead-in- water incident on
of every construction site. Subject to the the one hand and carrying on with their
Buildings Ordinance, planning restrictions daily work in a steadfast manner on the
and conditions of land grant, we will other. We did it in the past year and we
build as much domestic gross floor area can do it in the future. I hope Members
as practicable within the shortest possible will continue to oversee and support our
construction time. work in this respect and in other areas.
Secondly, in accordance with the Thank you.
(Source: HKSAR Government)
Building Journal 37