District Matters Co-ordination Task Force convenes first meeting (12.7.2022)
12.7.2022

The Deputy Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Cheuk Wing-hing, today (July 12) chaired the first meeting of the District Matters Co-ordination Task Force. The meeting drew up specific action programmes for the first phase of work of the Task Force, including the launching of the territory-wide Hong Kong New Cityscape clean-up campaign. The campaign has three focuses, namely strengthening normal cleansing work and putting an emphasis on handling hygiene black spots, enhancing publicity and community participation, and stepping up law enforcement. Relevant departments are required to submit action plans in a week's time to the Task Force for co-ordinating the departments to start their actions speedily with a view to launching the Hong Kong New Cityscape campaign within a month. The three-month campaign aims to enhance the city's environmental hygiene and cityscape within a short space of time and to ensure that the improvements will be sustained. Moreover, the meeting also formulated objectives and plans on dealing with "long-standing, big and difficult" inter-departmental district-based environmental hygiene and street management problems, such as illegal refuse deposits, water seepage in buildings, water dripping from air-conditioners, rodent infestation, garbage apartments and street obstruction. The Task Force will tackle the problems at root. For those involving the remits of various government departments, the Task Force will play a steering and co-ordination role in finding the solutions and establish a standard mode of operation based on the operational experience gained for regularised execution in the districts. "The Task Force will adopt a three-pronged approach to ensure that the improvements in environmental hygiene and the cityscape will be sustained and will not be short-lived. First, concerning the typical inter-departmental environmental hygiene problems, the Task Force will clarify the respective departmental responsibilities, rationalise procedures and establish a standard mode of operation for relevant departments to implement measures in the districts in a sustainable manner. Second, the Task Force will supervise relevant bureaux and departments to set sustainable action plans, key performance indicators and a system for evaluating the effectiveness of their measures. Third, the Task Force will continue to promote community participation and publicity and education, with a view to creating a new culture of keeping a clean environment and cherishing the cityscape so as to consolidate the improvements," Mr Cheuk said. "I am very glad to see that participating departments fully agreed with adopting a results-oriented approach to solve problems from the perspective of the public and provide a pleasant living environment for Hong Kong people, in fulfilment of President Xi Jinping's instructions for us to 'strive to deliver what the people call for' with concrete actions," he added. The Task Force is led by the Deputy Chief Secretary for Administration, with the Environment and Ecology Bureau as the main driving party. Members are from 17 bureaux and departments. Those attending today's meeting included the Secretary for the Environment and Ecology and his two Permanent Secretaries, the Permanent Secretary for Housing and nine Heads of Department of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, the Buildings Department, the Drainage Services Department, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, the Highways Department, the Home Affairs Department, the Information Services Department, the Marine Department and Radio Television Hong Kong, as well as deputies of the Education Bureau, the Hong Kong Police Force, the Lands Department, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department and the Transport Department. The Task Force will meet again in two weeks. Ends/Tuesday, July 12, 2022 Issued at HKT 18:05 NNNN