'Bring In More Contractors To Boost Street Cleaning'

There are now calls to increase competition among government street-cleaning contractors after an Ombudsman report pointed to poor performance in the sector.

In a report on Thursday, the Ombudsman said a monitoring mechanism by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) failed to deter bad performance among contractors, or stop them from being awarded contracts again. The report also said half of the contractors which won bids recently performed poorly.

Appearing on RTHK's Millennium programme on Friday, the convenor of the Environmental Services Contractors Alliance, Yan Wai-kiu, said there are currently only about five firms that provide street-cleaning services, and more competition would enhance quality.

Yau said one way to achieve that is to divide up multi-million-dollars contracts so that smaller companies could get a piece of the pie.

He also said the government should provide incentive to contractors to do better, without specifying. The Ombudsman said in its report the FEHD should consider introducing a separate incentive system so that contractors have greater motivation to improve service quality.

Yau said people shouldn't just rely on the cleaners to maintain hygiene. He said everyone has the responsibility to keep the streets clean.