Cheung welcomes LegCo's House Committee 'back to work'

Hong Kong's second-highest-ranking official said in his Sunday blog that reactivating the legislature's House Committee paralyzed for nearly seven months by opposition filibustering was a breakthrough that is of significance to public interest.

Lamenting the time wasted in political game playing, Chief Secretary for Administration Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said that the city can ill afford such internal strife, adding that the government would cooperate with the Legislature in clearing the backlog of pending bills during the remaining legislative term.

Taking back control of the House Committee on Friday's special meeting, the incumbent chairperson Starry Lee Wai-king is making progress in moving the pending 13 bills and 31 subsidiary legislations.

The backlog was caused by the filibustering by opposition legislators to block the election of the new chairperson in 17 meetings over the past seven months.

A government spokesman on Saturday welcome the latest development, saying: "The government is pleased to learn that the impasse in the House Committee has finally ended."

The government expects lawmakers will continue to take positive steps to move the pending bills so that the efforts by the relevant stakeholders in formulating them would not go down the drain, the spokesman said.