A lawmaker and a patients' rights advocate on Wednesday said the government's plan to bring forward the pre-registration hours for public dental clinics only deals with the symptoms of a queuing problem, and not the cause.

Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau told lawmakers on Tuesday that people will be allowed to sign up for next-day emergency treatment from 8pm, instead of from midnight.

The move follows criticism from the Audit Commission which found patients queuing for hours overnight to be in with a chance of getting an appointment the following day.

On an RTHK radio programme, Tim Pang from the Society for Community Organisation said the real problem is that there aren't enough public dentists.

“The queue will just start earlier in the day ... because the root of the problem is the insufficient manpower of the Department of Health, leading to insufficient service availability. Therefore, no matter how the queuing arrangements are changed, the core problem is actually manpower,” he said.

Echoing Pang's view, lawmaker Chan Hoi-yan noted on the same programme that there are only about 20,000 appointments available at public clinics each day, just half of the pre-pandemic level.

“For every 1,000 citizens, we only have 0.37 dentists... we have a significantly lower number of dentists compared to other cities,” said Chan, who chairs Legco's panel on health services.

Meanwhile, a former president of the Hong Kong Dental Association, Nelson Wong, said 108 of 300 Department of Health dentist positions are vacant at the moment.