AL Plenary | Urban renewal to enter new phase, Rosário expects

Li Canfeng (left) and Raimundo do Rosário

The work of the Urban Renewal Council (CRU) was questioned yesterday at the Legislative Assembly (AL). The criticism arose during the second consecutive day this week dedicated to hearing government responses to lawmakers’ spoken enquiries.
The Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário, highlighted the developments achieved on the CRU meeting held Monday. He classified those developments as “significant advances.”
“We approved internal regulations and the methodology of the work, as well as we decided on the creation of three specialized groups that will work on six topics,” Rosário said. He continued, adding that one of the issues found during the first meetings of the council “took more time to solve than expected.” When questioned on the nature of this issue he said it concerned the question of who should lead the process, the government or the private sector.
The problem was solved with the consensus among the members of the CRU that the government should lead the process.  Exactly how and when the government will take charge of the process was not announced. The secretary failed to clarify the schedule, saying, “There isn’t any timing yet. Initially I proposed that it should be the private [sector] leading but then the members decided that it should be the government. This changes everything because for the time being there isn’t a specific public entity doing any of this work. We only have a secretariat at the Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau (DSSOPT) to provide logistic support.”
According to the explanation of the DSSOPT director, Li Canfeng, the six topics to be addressed by the three working groups will have to do with the working model currently being considered and how it may be implemented, the concept of “temporary housing” and what land resources may be suitable for temporary housing. Further topics will include the reinforcement of the plan to support building maintenance, the reuse of industrial buildings and how to promote and develop the idea and strategies of the urban renewal.
Lawmaker Wong requested a calendar to push each of the processes forward and also remarked that “all the work from these new groups should be more disclosed, maybe with the publication of the minutes of the meetings.”
Secretary Rosário replied with the guarantee that the information would be publicized. “We are going to create a web page to disclose all the developments of the work that we are doing.” However, he noted that the full extent of the work would not be published, only the “most important points will be in the website.”  Rosário claimed that “the members [of the council] decided that it isn’t necessary [to put everything] and that there will be no public audience at these meetings. This is was what the members decided.”
The clarification on the matter came after a follow-up question from Pereira Coutinho.The lawmaker  urged the secretary to allow the media to be present in the meetings in order to ease public concerns, a request also shared by Ng Kuok Cheong.