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Following is the transcript (English portion) of a media session by the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Mr Joseph WP Wong, after attending the luncheon hosted by IT organisations today (March 3):
SCIT: We will issue today a consultation paper on the proposed merger of the Broadcasting Authority (BA) and the Telecommunications Authority (TA) to establish a unified regulator which will be called the Communications Authority (CA) -- for a three-month consultation period.
Our proposal is based on in-depth research and overseas experience. It is also in line with international trends.
If our proposal gains public support, it is our intention to introduce the enabling legislation before the end of this year. The new Communications Authority will be responsible for administering the existing two ordinances, the Telecommunications Ordinance and the Broadcasting Ordinance. There will be no changes for the time being to the existing regulatory and licensing framework.
Once the CA is in operation, we will review the two Ordinances to see whether or not some changes or improvements could be made so that the consumer interest can be better protected and the provisions relating to competition can be improved.
We propose a governing body model for the CA. The governing body will comprise seven members: one non-official Chairman, four non-official members, an official member and an ex-officio member who is the Director-General of the executive department.
The executive department of the proposed Communications Authority will be made up of the existing Office of the Telecommunications Authority and the Broadcasting Division of the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority. The Office will remain a government department and will operate as a trading fund. There will be no forced redundancy arising from the merger.
I am confident that the industries will support the proposal. I hope the industries, LegCo Members and the public will give us their views so that we can refine our proposals before we take the Bill forward to the Legislative Council.
Reporter: You said there will not be any redundancy in the merger in the initial stage. But given the convergence, the need to fine tune the legislation is very fluid of the convergence legislation. Do you envisage some ... in the future?
SCIT: Of course it is possible in any reorganisation, such as merger, that one could identify areas of savings, including staff savings. The point I am making is if staff savings are identified, then these staff could be redeployed elsewhere and there is no question of forcing these staff to leave the government. That does not mean we will not be looking actively at possible staff savings. The other point I would like to make in terms of staff implications is that while on the one hand, two bodies merging into one could save staff, on the other, and we all know, that the market is getting complicated, all these applications are getting very complicated, so in a way there may be a need to have more high-level staff to manage the unified regulator. But all these will have to be looked at. I am not suggesting that we need additional staff. I am saying that for the merger, we do not want to lay off any staff. Any staff identified that can be saved will be redeployed elsewhere. After all, we are talking about a very small number of staff in these two organisations.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Friday, March 3, 2006
Issued at HKT 18:52
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