<![CDATA[Hong Kong's chief auditor scolds environmental watchdog for 'inadequate supervision' of stalled government-funded projects]>
Hong Kong's chief auditor said Wednesday that nearly half of all government-funded environmental projects took more than four years to complete, exposing inadequate supervision by the city's environmental watchdog.
The Director of Audit's twice annual report found that only 22 per cent of the projects approved by the Environment and Conservation Fund (ECF) had been completed in a year or less. The report also said 47 per cent of the 607 projects had been underway since 2014 without proper oversight by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD).
The ECF was established in 1994 as a statutory trust to provide financial support to local non-profit organisations for educational, research and other projects and activities. As of December 2018, more than HK$6.7 billion (US$854 million) had been injected into the fund.
The audit report noted one case in which a secondary school was granted HK$866,550 in 2010 to build a so-called green roof, which was scheduled for completion in July 2013.
The NGO Green Power received HK$8.5 million from the government's Environment and Conservation Fund in 2018. Photo: Nora Tam
Three years later, however, the school said it was still raising funds for fencing that was needed before the installation of the green roof could begin.
After failing to reach out to the school on multiple occasions in 2018 and 2019, the audit found that the government was still waiting for the school to respond and report its progress.
The audit report said the EPD had neglected the project's supervision for six years and four months and the project was now five and a half years behind its original completion date.
"As a result of the inadequacies in follow-up actions by EPD, the progress of the project was not known despite significant project delay as of January 2019," said the 85-page report, which was released on Wednesday.
The audit also found that as of last September, 99 project heads had "dragged their feet" after approval and 5 per cent waited for more than a year before starting their projects.
As a result, the report said, it took longer than usual to complete these projects, eating through funding that could have been released for other projects.
In response to the audit report, the EPD said that the duration of these projects would normally range from four to 11 years, depending on the job.
"We recognised the deficiency in implementing such installation projects at schools and have been discussing in recent meetings how to deal with these problems," the EPD said.
The Director of Audit report is an twice-yearly assessment of city-funded projects. The audit, which is overseen by the Audit Commission, does not notify in advance what projects and government departments will be scrutinised.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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