CE says no phased plans made for land auctions

No jurisdiction will make phased planning for land auctions, Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng said in response to lawmaker Leong Hong Sai’s questions yesterday.

The head of the government sat before the parliament for questions yesterday.

At the session, Leong asked him about short, mid and long-term planning on land auctions. Ho, in reply, said that the government has no such planning. In fact, he added, no place – including mainland China – will make such long planning on land auctions.

Ho said the sandwich-class housing projects opposite the airport and on Avenida Wai Long may see expansion in the area of each unit. Should that happen, he added, the plot of land will have less, instead of more than 4,000 units, which was the originally planned number.

In this case, the government will need additional land to build some 6,000 units to meet its promised threshold.

In the past two decades, no land has been auctioned. The government’s current plans are to auction four plots of land, but adjustments may be possible due to market developments.

He pledged that the government would secure the supplies of subsidized housing before putting land to auction for private use.

Explaining the plan on auctioning land, he said it was foreseen that supplies of private housing will be tight and in five years’ time, when the economy has revived to a certain level, these housing units will see increased demand.

When answering lawmaker Leong Sun Iok’s questions on sandwich-class housing, Ho emphasized the importance of having a law before building the housing, because housing regulations codify the sizes of different compartments in a residential units. To avoid building units that cannot be sold, the law is critical.

Ho also dismissed the suggestion to allow economic housing unit owners to have one-off opportunities to purchase sandwich-class housing units. He said the proposal of restricting economic housing unit owners to purchasing sandwich-class housing units is in fact caring for the feelings of economic housing unit buyers.

“If I can get a new unit, why should I take a used one?” Ho questioned the lawmaker. Economic housing law prohibits the transfer of units to private buyers; instead, used units can only be sold to the Housing Bureau for future use or assignments.

The head of the government also refused to adopt the Singapore-style housing ownership program, saying that “your neighbor’s shoes may not fit your feet.”

importance of procedural civil servant promotion

While responding to lawmaker Becky Song’s question on civil servant recruitment, the appointment of officials and attracting talent from outside, Ho stressed that he needs to respect the civil service career ladder.

“It has always been said that guanxi is preferable to knowledge,” Ho said. The saying is used in Macau to hint at the alleged nepotism in the public sector. Members of the public usually believe that incompetent but connection-rich civil servants are promoted in the government.

As he answered Song’s question, Ho compared the public sector to the private sector, pointing out that the former has procedures to follow when hiring a person, unlike the latter where any high-caliber candidates can be recruited quickly or even fast tracked.

In the civil service, appointments cannot be orchestrated with the mentality of the private sector, Ho added.

He used his personal experiences to illustrate his answer. He revealed that intermittently he would receive letters from civil servants to recommend themselves for positions such as bureau directors. They even made promises to do the jobs well.

In reply, he questioned the feasibility since some of them were only on technician level. “Had they been promoted, I would have received a lot of complaints,” Ho said.

He disclosed that in Hengqin hybrid appointments – with elements of the public and the private sectors blended – is being tested. Laws may be made in the future to allow the appointments of bureau leaders from society.