The ombudsman has ruled that residents were not sufficiently consulted before work on a $250 million AIDS and health centre began near their homes in Kowloon Bay.
The Office of the Commissioner for Administrative Complaints said the Health and Welfare Branch should have followed standard consultation procedures.
But the report, which followed a complaint from Richland Garden residents, does not call for an end to construction of the clinic. Since April, residents have been staging protests and have tried to stop workers reaching the site.
Although the report has no legal force, convenor of Kowloon Bay Clinic Concern Group Poon Chuen-yuen said the residents would use it as ammunition in civil litigation against the Government.
The report found the Health and Welfare Branch had failed to conduct wide and 'substantive' public consultation before starting to build the centre.
'The public 'consultation' purportedly to have been conducted in this case cannot satisfy the yardstick for fair, adequate, meaningful and timely consultation which any open and responsible government should adopt,' it said.
