In a shock development last week the government actually did something good and meaningful. I am well aware that readers do not turn to this column to be regaled with praise for the work of the Leung Chun-ying administration, yet every dog has its day and this governmental dog’s day came on April 1 with the implementation of the new charging policy for plastic bags.
In many ways this is an excellent example of how government and business can work together for the public good.
Let’s just run through what that means: first, it is clearly a good idea to reduce the amount of unrecyclable waste. Secondly, this scheme is realistic because this type of waste can easily be reduced. Thirdly, the scheme is simple and straightforward with readily understood objectives. Fourthly, although, as usual, the government has shifted the task of implementation onto business, in this instance businesses were happy to save the costs of supplying plastic bags and believed their customers would accept a modest charge or change shopping habits.
Generally when officials come up with a 'great plan' for this or that it ends up creating an enormous bureaucracy
Generally when officials come up with a “great plan” for this or that it ends up creating an enormous bureaucracy that needs to be fed and watered with public money and leaves hapless businesses with a burden of form filling and other types of compliance requirements wasting vast amounts of time.
The beauty of this simple plastic bag scheme is that apart from the inevitable mobilisation of more bureaucrats to supervise enforcement, it will cost very little and produce immediate results.
Compare and contrast this simple approach to the bureaucrats’ obsession with making Hong Kong a hi-tech hub. On the one hand this objective is approached by liberally using public funds to build vast edifices that apparently will house this hub, while on the other establishing funding programmes that turn out to be bureaucratic nightmares with a myriad of ways of stalling new projects by insisting that applicants perfect the art of form filling at the expense of concentrating on the real task of technological development.
Think how much more could be achieved on this front by adopting what might be called the plastic bag approach. It would involve easy things like mobilising space in under-used, old industrial buildings, providing simple to apply for loans and, er, doing nothing. Because if there really is a burgeoning hi-tech industry business ready to take flight in Hong Kong it will do so largely under its own steam.
As it happens there is a sector of the Hong Kong community, the arts world, that has found creative ways of utilising industrial buildings and establishing businesses in these venues, but they do so in defiance of the rules and in fear of a bureaucratic crackdown.