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Following is the question by the Hon Kwong Chi-kin and a written reply by the Secretary for Economic Development and Labour, Mr Stephen Ip, in the Legislative Council today (January 10):
Question:
As a post office was robbed recently, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the total number of post offices at which the PayThruPost service is provided at present; and among them, of the respective numbers of post offices which are manned by only one or two staff members, have glass screens or closed-circuit televisions, and have security guards stationed;
(b) of the criteria for deciding whether or not to adopt the above security measures; and
(c) whether it will implement such measures in all those post offices at which the above service is provided but the security measures have not been adopted; if it will, when the measures will be implemented; if not, the reasons for that?
Reply:
Madam President,
(a) At present, the Hongkong Post (HKP) offers PayThruPost service at 131 post offices. Of these, 51 are manned by two staff members and the remaining by three or more staff members. All the counters in these 131 post offices are installed with glass screens. The deployment of additional security measures, including closed-circuit televisions and security guards etc, depends on the scale and circumstances of individual post offices.
(b) In deciding whether to adopt the security measures mentioned above, the HKP has taken into account the circumstances of individual post offices, the advice of the Crime Prevention Bureau of the Hong Kong Police Force, and the guidelines issued by the Treasury on the security arrangement for Government collection and payment offices.
(c) The HKP contacted the Crime Prevention Bureau of the Hong Kong Police Force immediately after the recent robbery case to identify areas for improvement. For security reasons, it is not appropriate for us to provide details of the enhanced measures, but the HKP has already started implementing those measures, taking into account the needs of individual post offices for protecting staff, customers, Government revenue and property.
Ends/Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Issued at HKT 13:04
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