More than a year after councillors took office following revamped district-level polls, their first annual work reports were recently made public.
When asked why some of them handled more than a thousand cases and some little more than a hundred, Mak said circumstances can vary and some cases could be more complicated than others.
Last year, the authorities also introduced a new scheme where councillors have to meet the public regularly, for the people to file complaints or seek help.
The minister said some residents have complained that the sessions, held at community centres, were rather inconvenient.
Mak said officials have made changes to the scheme in a couple of districts, and they will try to adopt such changes in more communities.
“We hope we can make things more convenient….The people said ‘Of course I won’t go there, I’d rather find the councillor in his or her office near my home’,” she told reporters after attending an event.
“So we’re trying to improve this by asking councillors to take turns in setting up street booths as ‘mobile reception rooms’, so the public can contact them easier.”
Various local media reports have noted that the public and the press could only check the work reports in a district council office and not online, and they couldn’t take pictures of the reports, including documents on expenses.
Mak stressed that the arrangements follow established practice.
She described the current-term councils as having unprecedented transparency, saying there have never been so many systemic statistics available regarding the work of district councillors.
