THE Government has tightened its grip on the building of educational establishments because of an eight-year delay in the construction of a secondary school.
An Assistant Director of Education, Hsu Show-hoo, said yesterday that the practice of allowing the board of directors to supervise the construction of schools had been scrapped because it had given ''a lot of trouble''.
The main problem was that the Government could not order contractors to speed up their work as they were not employed by the Government, Mr Hsu said.
The policy had led to an eight-year delay in the completion of the Ju Ching Chu English College in Tuen Mun.
By August 1992, piling work on the school premises had been completed, but the contractors then inflated the cost by 65 per cent from $17 million in 1989 to $28 million this year.
The Government had found the new price tag ''unrealistic'' and would find outside experts to assess the new costs, Mr Hsu said.