E-toll fiasco is one more black mark for Hong Kong’s Transport Department
- The hasty announcement and last-minute scramble to postpone the electronic toll payment system was just one of several recent bungles
- The lack of planning and problem-solving skills on display does not inspire confidence, and neither does the weak attempt at excusing the postponement
Glitches are part of everyday life; we update our apps to fix bugs and make improvements. Carrying out tests and ironing out kinks takes time, and so it is unreasonable for the government to require all vehicle owners to apply for the e-toll tag within a few weeks.
Blind faith – and in this case, the failure to accurately assess the department’s capability and track record – has no place in the execution of public policies and services. It brings the government into disrepute.
System inconsistencies are elementary but by no means minor errors. It is indicative of the level of care – or lack of care, in this case – that the government employs in its work.
If Hong Kong can’t even process and send out electronic tags in time, we are aeons away from truly efficient governance. According to the government, pushing back the launch of the system from the unrealistic February 26 date to May 7 was done to give drivers more time to apply for the tag.
Let’s be serious here. The launch is not being postponed for the benefit of drivers, but because the government could not deliver by the original date.
One of the problems was, astonishingly, the government did not have enough tags in stock. This raises the question of how we could even talk about key performance indicators when we can’t do simple maths.
Here’s a quick quiz: there are more than 800,000 registered vehicles in Hong Kong. How many electronic toll tags should we have made? Apparently the answer isn’t a no-brainer for our government.
Finally, a word of advice for the transport commissioner. Stop spinning the postponement as “buy[ing] more time for drivers to familiarise themselves with the HKeToll scheme, so they can get the vehicle tags and set up accounts”.
The postponement is to buy more time for Law to properly get things ready this time. Secretary for Transport and Logistics Lam Sai-hung will have to answer for this level of incompetence by people on his watch.
Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA