Office of The Ombudsman announces results of two direct investigations
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The Ombudsman, Ms Connie Lau, today (June 28) announced the completion of two direct investigations, namely "The arrangement between Housing Department (HD) and Water Supplies Department (WSD) regarding payment of water charges for common areas and vacant units in public housing estates" and "Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD)'s criteria for publicising the list of traders involved after issuing a Food Safety Order".
Arrangement between HD and WSD regarding payment of water charges for common areas and vacant units in public housing estates
Water charges for common areas and vacant residential units in public housing estates are paid to the WSD by the HD on behalf of the Hong Kong Housing Authority. However, in one complaint case handled by the Office, it was found that the HD's property services agent in a public housing estate had sent the water bill for the vacancy period of a residential unit to the tenant who subsequently took up that unit for him to pay. The Office has also noticed that in a number of public housing estates, there were long-standing default payments in the water accounts payable by the HD, but the WSD failed to address the problem. Moreover, the confusing arrangement between the HD and the WSD regarding change of consumership of residential and non-residential units has caused some outstanding payments to be completely written off, resulting in loss of public revenue.
This direct investigation has revealed impropriety on the part of these two departments in causing administrative confusion as noted above.
To address the inadequacies of the HD and the WSD, the Office has made five recommendations for improvement.
FEHD's criteria for publicising list of traders involved after issuing Food Safety Order
The focus of this direct investigation was on the reasons for the FEHD's varied decisions on whether or not to publicise the respective lists of traders involved after issuing its three Food Safety Orders regarding substandard cooking oils during the period of September to November 2014.
The two direct investigation reports have been uploaded to the Office of The Ombudsman website at www.ombudsman.hk for public viewing.
Ends/Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Issued at HKT 13:00
Issued at HKT 13:00
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