Legislative assembly | Cheong pledges more eco-friendly gov’t vehicles

At the Legislative Assembly yesterday, the Secretary for Administration and Justice, André Cheong, replied to the spoken inquiries of lawmakers, saying that
they are aiming to reduce the number of vehicles, progressively replace the current fleet with a more eco-friendly one, and promote the use of clean energy solutions.
The reply was regarding an inquiry from lawmaker Leong Sun Iok, who called on the government to change the current situation. He called the number of vehicles owned by the government and the vehicle types wasteful, saying they carried consequences for traffic and the number of parking spots occupied in both the public parking lots and street parking spaces.
Leong also wanted to know what work was being done by the administration to replace the gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles for electric vehicles (EVs) that pollute less.
“We are promoting their acquisition if we can prepare the necessary conditions. We need to have charging stations. Some services do not have the charging stations to be able to charge to EVs,” Cheong said. “In the new building we will do everything possible to, from the project [stage], include the charging stations because this can effectively promote the use of EVs.”
Cheong noted that the government has been paying special attention to this topic especially “to ease traffic pressure.”
Revealing some data, he said that the government currently possesses a total of 2,115 vehicles and is using 915 parking spots, 348 of which are located in public car parks and 567 of which are street parking spots.
According to Cheong, this year the government will continue a measure that was previously enforced and aims to control the number of vehicles through “strict control over the acquisition of new vehicles.”
In practical terms, this means that according to guidelines issued by the Financial Services Bureau to all public services, the government will only authorize the acquisition of new vehicles when the new vehicle replaces an old model that will be scrapped, or when the new vehicle replaces more than one vehicle.
Regarding the new acquisitions, the government will also give preference to the replacement of the fossil fuel-powered vehicles with EVs, Cheong said. “We will also install more charging stations for [electric] vehicles so we can have more EVs [in the government services],” he added.
In reply to further questioning from Mak, Cheong also revealed that the government currently has a total of 31 eco-friendly vehicles, which the secretary considered to be a “low rate.” He admitted that “there is a lot to do on this matter and the government must lead the way.”
The official also hinted that the rules on the acquisition of vehicles for high ranking government officials might have to be updated, as they have included characteristics such as the engine capacity and the price of the vehicle before taxes as limitations, saying, “[taking the price into consideration] for example, the majority of Tesla cars exceed the parameters of the government acquisition because electric vehicles are already exempt from taxes.” He added, “the regulations are over 10 years old and maybe it’s time to review them to include the use of eco-friendly vehicles more clearly. We hope we can optimize even more on this matter.”
To reduce the number of vehicles and the use of public car parks, the secretary also said that the government would enforce the digitalization of several government procedures, “to facilitate and reduce the need of delivering documents [in paper format] and the use of vehicles to deliver them.”
The goal that is admittedly more difficult to achieve is the sharing of vehicles by several government officials and staff. Leong also proposed this solution, saying, “Why can’t government officials share the same car when attending a meeting at the same location?”
Lawmaker Mak Soi Kun tried to reply to the question, noting that he was aware that such procedures were already common practice in some bureaus, particularly in the Land, Public Works, and Transport Bureau.
Lawmakers also discussed the use of government vehicles for private purposes. Cheong said that there were already a lot of rules and regulations on this topic and that they are very restrictive.
“There are rules that regulate this from the acquisition to the use. The scope of the use is very clear in the regulations, If this scope is exceeded, the user is infringing the rules,” Cheong said. “The public services keep a very rigorous record of the use of their vehicles to control their use because this constitutes an infraction and everyone can file a complaint about this to the [related] service or even to the Commission Against Corruption.” He recalled that that the anti-corruption watchdog had already investigated some cases on this matter in the past.