2
.
Government envisages for the forthcoming year in the fields of
economics and finance, and then go on to report progress and prospects in
our major social programres, including in particular our plans for
secondary education, and the conclusions reached in the Review of
Social Welfare which I announced last year would be undertaken.
Water supply
5.
I think that before I go any further Hon. Members will wish to
know what our prospects are about water supply. At this time of year our
reservoirs should be more or less full. In fact storage is 44,442 million
gallons, or 59.6% of total capacity or 58% of the same time last year.
We have the new and biggest reservoir Hong Kong has ever known at High
Island waiting to store rainfall, but it remains sadly empty. These
figures include the generous addition of 3,400 million gallons from the
Chinese Authorities who maintained a higher rate of delivery in June and
July and extended the normal supply period for a month in order to help us
out.
6.
This is an unusually bad situation and the supply is at present
restricted to 10 hours a day for domestic consumers, but not to industry,
and this reduces consumption to 225 million gallons a day. The question is
whether this restriction should be relaxed, or further tightened or what.
7.
There are two plus points in our prospects
firstly we can count on 1,000 million gallons a month from the
desalter regardless of rain;
secondly the Chinese authorities agreed to increase their delivery
as from October 1st from 24,000 million gallons to 30,000 million
gallons a year. This extra 6,000 million gallons at this juncture is
invaluable; it represents a considerable technical feat and a most
helpful action for which we are indeed grateful.
Although...