Government departments under fire for arguing over responsibility for upkeep of roadside trees
Departments squabble among themselves over who should be responsible for care of trees and, in some cases, for removing dangerous ones
Government departments have been passing the buck and arguing whether it is their responsibility to maintain roadside trees that might pose threats to road users, the Audit Commission has found.
The disagreements are so deep-rooted that the government had to establish last year an internal appeal board for departments unhappy with decisions made by the Tree Management Office - a dedicated unit to coordinate tree management efforts - over who is responsible.
One of the core arguments is the definition of "landscaped area" by the roadside, which the commission said had not been "fully settled" among the departments despite high-level cross-departmental meetings since 2012.
Trees on a "landscaped area" are cared for by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, while other roadside trees in urban areas are the responsibility of the Highways Department and the Lands Department.
The responsibility had been set out in a government technical circular issued in 2004, but "frequent disputes" among the departments had continued, the commission said.
"This sometimes caused delay in handling tree complaint cases in a timely manner, [a] waste of time and resources by departments in arguing their cases, dissatisfaction of complainants, and more importantly, potential hazards to the public," the commission said in its report published yesterday.
The tree office handled 39 disputes among departments involving 735 trees from August last year to June, and four of them required its adjudication.
To gauge the extent of the roadside tree problem, the office initiated a territory-wide survey in 2012. So far, it has found that 70,000 trees - including 1,339 "problematic" trees - do not fall under the jurisdiction of any of the nine core departments.
The office hoped that on completion of the survey, it could further spell out responsibilities for these trees.
Kenneth Chan Ka-lok, a Civic Party lawmaker, said the commission's report reconfirmed the need for a law to govern tree management.
"We believe the problems unearthed by the Audit Commission cannot be resolved completely without a clear legislative framework," he said.
Over the handling of the brown root rot disease in Hong Kong - dubbed the Sars of trees - the commission expressed concern that 16 trees confirmed to be infected had yet to be removed by mid-August.
One tree was not felled for up to four months after it was diagnosed with the disease, which is spread through the air and soil.
The office confirmed that 118 diseased trees had been found from March 2010 to mid-August, of which 92 had been removed.
Brown root rot is caused by a highly virulent fungus named Phellinus noxius, which prefers acidic, hot and humid conditions.
The disease, for which there is no effective cure, has been found in the United States and tropical and subtropical regions in Asia, including southern Japan, the mainland, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. It has attacked at least nine species in Hong Kong.
