Keep Hong Kong libraries open until late night like in Taipei and Singapore, adviser urges, after criticism by Ombudsman
Legislator says current hours are usually the same as people’s work hours, so evening extensions are needed to halt worrying decline in ‘culture of reading’
Hong Kong’s public libraries should be open until midnight to encourage the population to read, a member of an advisory committee said, a day after operations were slammed by the Ombudsman.
Roy Kwong Chun-yu, a Democratic Party member of the city’s legislature and part of a committee that advises the government on libraries, put forward the idea after the Office of the Ombudsman on Tuesday said there was “a clear misallocation of resources” in the sector.
Ombudsman Connie Lau Yin-hing asked why the government had been spending extra money to buy a targeted 700,000 new items a year for public libraries, but had been throwing away as waste paper hundreds of thousands of old materials rather than donating them to charity or holding book sales.
Lau also said the resources stocked by public libraries had increased 17 per cent over the last eight years, but the number of items the public borrowed dropped by more than 18 per cent.
Speaking on a radio show on Wednesday, Kwong said those findings revealed a worrying decline in the city’s “culture of reading”.