The Legislative Assembly (AL) yesterday unanimously passed the outline of a government-initiated bill that proposes to transfer some of the Municipal Affairs Bureau’s (IAM) existing statutory functions and duties to the respective public entities under the government’s Transport and Public Works portfolio.
Secretary for Administration and Justice Wong Sio Chak introduced the outline of the bill during a plenary session of the legislature’s hemicycle yesterday.
Wong took office as the government’s secretary for Administration and Justice on October 16, succeeding André Cheong Weng Chon who became the Legislative Assembly’s president on that day. Yesterday’s plenary session of the legislature was the first one that Wong addressed in his capacity as the government’s secretary for Administration and Justice.
After yesterday’s passage of its outline, the bill will be passed to one of the legislature’s standing committees for an article-by-article review, after which it will be resubmitted to another plenary session for its second and final debate and article-by-article vote.
Unlike other public entities in general, each of which is set up by an administrative regulation, the Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM), as a public entity, is a non-political municipal organisation established in compliance with Section 5 of Chapter 4 of the Macau Basic Law which calls for the establishment of “municipal organisations which are not organs of political power”.
IAM was set up by a law that came into force in January 2019, replacing the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) which was set up in January 2002.
Government-drafted administrative regulations, aka by-laws, do not require the legislature’s approval.
The bill, the outline of which was passed yesterday, proposes amendments to the current law establishing and regulating IAM, which took effect on January 1, 2019.
The government proposes that the amendment bill will take effect on June 1 next year.
According to Wong, the bill proposes to transfer several current functions and duties of the bureau to the respective public entities under the Transport and Public Works portfolio, namely naming newly-built streets, roads and other public spaces, assigning and allocating address numbers, and carrying out the maintenance and repair of road and drainage network.
Wong acknowledged that some of the current IAM functions and duties overlap with those of some public entities under the transport and public works portfolio.
Wong said that the number of IAM departments will be reduced from 12 to eight, while the number of divisions will be lowered from 36 to 19.
According to Macau’s public administration structure, bureaus consist of departments, while departments consist of divisions.
Secretary for Administration and Justice Wong Sio Chak addresses yesterday’s plenary session in the Legislative Assembly’s (AL) hemicycle. – Photo: GCS
