LCQ21: Outsourcing property management services for public rental housing estates
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Question:
At present, among the public rental housing (PRH) estates under the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA), the property management services of about 60 per cent of them are provided by private property management services companies. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(1) in respect of the contracts awarded by HA in each of the past five years for providing three types of services for PRH estates, namely (i) property management, (ii) cleansing and (iii) security, of the details of such contracts, including (a) the location of service, (b) the name of contractor, (c) the estimated price ($ million) as stated in the tender, (d) whether such price is the lowest among all of the tenders received for the tender exercise concerned, (e) the awarded contract price ($ million), (f) the contract expiry date, and (g) the numbers of cleansing workers and security guards providing the services as well as their wage ranges as stated in the contract (set out in tables of the same format as the table below);
Year: _________ Type of service:________
| (a) | (b) | (c) | (d) | (e) | (f) | (g) | |||
| Cleansing workers | Security guards | ||||||||
| Number | Wage range | Number | Wage range | ||||||
(2) how HA assesses the satisfaction levels of PRH households in respect of the outsourced property management services, including the assessment criteria adopted; and
(3) whether HA has monitored the sub-contracting of services by its outsourced service contractors, so as to ensure that the sub-contractors have employed an adequate number of workers to provide the services and have offered reasonable remuneration packages to the workers concerned?
Reply:
President,
My consolidated reply to various parts of the question raised by Hon Fernando Cheung is as follows.
Details of the prevailing outsourced property services contracts under the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA), which cover property management, cleansing and security services, are set out in the Annex.
HA conducts the "Public Housing Recurrent Survey" annually. Content of the survey includes collecting feedback of PRH residents on the satisfaction level on the outsourced property management services. The assessment criteria comprises four aspects, i.e. quality of security services; cleanliness and hygienic condition of common areas; maintenance-related services in the PRH units and the estate common areas; and the sense of responsibility of estate officers. In general, the majority of PRH residents indicated that they were satisfied with the above four aspects of services provided by the property management services contractors.
The contracts between HA and contractors stipulate that the latter have to comply with the laws of Hong Kong, including laws relating to labour. If contractors are confirmed to have breached the contracts, HA will, depending on the actual circumstances and seriousness of the case, take appropriate regulatory actions, including removing the contractors from the List of Cleansing Service Contractors (the List), restricting or suspending them from tendering, and terminating the contracts, etc.
The contracts signed by HA and the contractors stipulate that the contractors must adopt the Government's Standard Employment Contract (SEC), which covers clear terms of employment, as the contract with their non-skilled employees. If contractors are confirmed to have breached the contract requirements (such as failure to enter into the SEC with their non-skilled workers or fulfilling the contract terms), HA may, depending on the actual circumstances and seriousness of the case, take regulatory actions as mentioned above. HA has also set up the List to continuously assess the performance of contractors in various aspects.
The Government has all along been very concerned about the employment rights and benefits of non-skilled employees engaged by Government Service Contractors (GSCs). The Secretary for Labour and Welfare has set up an inter-bureaux/departmental working group (Working Group) to explore feasible options to improve the government outsourcing system with a view to enhancing the protection of reasonable employment terms and conditions as well as the labour benefits for non-skilled employees engaged by GSCs. Apart from the Labour and Welfare Bureau and Labour Department, members of the Working Group also include the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Housing Department and Government Property Agency. The scope of the review of the Working Group includes the assessment criteria in tendering so as to provide more reasonable employment terms and conditions to non-skilled employees of GSCs while at the same time improving the requirements of service quality. The Working Group will also study the content of the SEC and the duration of government service contracts in order to strengthen the protection of the labour rights and benefits (such as severance payment) of the eligible employees.
Ends/Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Issued at HKT 15:45
Issued at HKT 15:45
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