The blame game is on with lawmakers rejecting allegations they had been challenging the Wa Ying College reconstruction project for political reasons.
The Education Bureau sought approval from lawmakers for HK$473.3 million in funds to reconstruct the 50-year-old school building in Ho Man Tin.
The proposal went through the education panel and was supposed to head to the public works subcommittee next.
The bureau pulled the funding request on Tuesday, saying it wasn't confident of lawmakers' support in light of remarks made during a meeting on March 30.
Education panel chief Priscilla Leung Mei-fun said yesterday that lawmakers in the March 30 meeting had wanted more details on the reconstruction to prove its necessity and had not been picking on the school in particular.
Leung, a public works subcommittee member, said she only learned of the withdrawal through newspaper reports.
"The government should explain why the project hit the rocks," she said.
The Education Bureau said yesterday that a few days before the public works subcommittee meeting, scheduled for yesterday, many lawmakers had still expressed reservations, leading it to the conclusion that the project won't secure enough support even if it pressed ahead.
"To avoid the funding application being rejected and overturned, the government decided to temporarily withdraw the funding application," a spokesman said.
When asked whether pro-establishment lawmakers were dissatisfied with the school - whose principal Wun Chi-wa had written that the government should shelve the extradition bill in June 2019 - Leung said lawmakers were mainly concerned about whether the cost was reasonable.
She said the administration should persuade lawmakers the request was reasonable.
In the March 30 meeting, Leung said there were secondary schools - without naming Wa Ying - that had been involved in the unrest and the bureau should perform due diligence on schools it was proposing to redevelop.
She insisted yesterday she didn't have the college's past in mind in that meeting.
College vice-principal Amy Lau Mei-chu said she did not hear any doubts from lawmakers over its political stance and that the school is liaising with the bureau to see if it should submit more information. The government has said it would resubmit the redevelopment plan to Legco's subcommittee after a review.
