‘A colossal waste of time and money’: Legco quorum calls cost Hongkongers HK$45.6 million
In all, 115 hours spent in 2015-2016 session on just taking headcounts
Time is money, as the saying goes, and Hong Kong’s legislature has been wasting plenty of both.
The Legislative Council ended its fifth term yesterday bogged down in a filibuster by the pan-democrats to block the government’s proposed reform of the city’s medical watchdog, even as it emerged that lawmakers had wasted more than HK$45.6 million in taxpayers’ money during this term on taking quorum calls.
More than half of the sum was wasted during the 2015-16 year alone. That was without factoring in the work hours that government officials and lawmakers wasted while waiting in the chamber for secretariat staff to take headcounts.
Legco president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing noted that 115 hours had been spent on quorum calls in the 2015-16 session, with 596 bells rung.
Asking for a headcount is a tactic frequently deployed by pan-democrats to delay approval of government proposals.
According to the Basic Law and Legco’s rules of procedure, at least half of all members are required to attend a debate to ensure enough representation. If a quorum is not met after the bell has been rung for 15 minutes, the meeting will have to be adjourned until the next sitting.
democrats intensify their “non-cooperation campaign” against Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s administration.
The number of quorum calls rose from 191 in the 2012-13 legislative term to 325 in 2014-15. The time wasted on quorum counts rose from 49.71 hours in 2013-14 to 56.01 hours in 2014-15.
Taking into account the average hourly expenditure of HK$216,000 on council meetings, it was estimated that between last October and yesterday, about HK$24.8 million had been spent on counting the number of members present in the chamber.
The same bill for taxpayers was about HK$9.4 million in 2013-14 and HK$11.4 million in 2014-15.
In total, HK$45.6 million was wasted in this manner from 2013–14 to 2015–16.
Weekly Legco meetings were adjourned 18 times over the same period, of which 11 adjournments were made in the current term. The amount of reduced meeting time due to adjournments this legislative year was about 110 hours, double that for 2012–13.
Wong Kwok-hing, a lawmaker from the pro-establishment Federation of Trade Unions and a fierce critic of filibustering, said: “It is a colossal waste of time and money. It seems to have become a licence for the opposition camp to waste public money for their own agenda. The voters should decide themselves if they want to see this go on in the council.”
