The city's nine major performing arts groups have written to the chief executive questioning the government's plan to slash public funding for the arts in the next financial year. The arts groups, the city's creative leaders, argued that spending cuts contradicted the government's stated aims of developing creative industries and building the West Kowloon Cultural District. Their letter came after arts groups were told by the Home Affairs Bureau to set their spending plans at the 2007-08 budget level in the next financial year, which would mean cuts of 10 to 50 per cent from the current levels of public funding. An experimental theatre group said it would mean firing up to seven employees and conducting fewer arts lessons in schools. The letter, addressed to Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and copied to other officials, questioned the funding cut. It was delivered on September 25, but the government has yet to reply. The arts groups were told of the budget cuts by bureau officials who attended their board meetings. One board was told the cuts would allow the government to divert more spending towards social issues such as drug problems, an executive said. Mathias Woo Yan-wai, executive director of the experimental theatre group Zuni Icosahedron, was told the group's funding would be cut by up to 30 per cent because of the 'huge resources allocated to the West Kowloon arts hub'. The bureau yesterday dismissed the accusation that spending cuts were to help pay for the West Kowloon arts hub.