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1375
Hong
[Baroness Vickers.]
[LORDS]
fact, when I saw the Governor last time he said, "When you came previously, when was First Secretary, you ticked me off ". I could not remember what I had said, but he told me that I had complained about the standard of hous- ing, and he agreed with me. There is already certain money specially allocated for rebuilding these old blocks; in other words, instead of having the one room, as they had before, with communal wash- ing and so on, they are going to be made into fluts. Unlike a great many other nationalities, the Chinese have a tremen- dous facility for home-making. If you go to certain towns, like Calcutta in India, and if you compare their standards with those of the people who come out of the houses on the hillsides in China- and there are still some--it is quite remarkable when you see them coming out in their beautifully starched garments.
*
The question of drug addiction has been mentioned, and action has been taken by the Committee against Narcotics, which advises the Government. At the moment there are about 100,000 addicts, mostly males; that is only 2 per cent. of the population. A great many of them --and I have been to see the places where they are rehabilitated-have not reverted they have really been cured of drug-taking. I would agree that school- ing is still a diflicult proposition. I do not know whether any action can be taken by the Hong Kong Government, but what worires me is the fact that children have to leave school at 12 and are not legally allowed to go to work until they are 14. So there is a two-year gap, which I think means that many of them go to work illegally. On the other hand, through the activities of the inspec. tors, child labour is going down. But, of course, the situation is very difficult when you have 25,000 factories-the industry is very fragmented-only 118 of which have over 500 workers and about 15,000 of which have less than ten workers. But the inspectors do prosecute. We have
now seen,
Kong
1376
Then we come to the question of family planning. There is a greater need for help in this work. When one goes to China and is able to see for oneself how the Chinese there keep to the standard of two children per family, one hopes that perhaps the Chinese in Hong Kong may feel that they are able to take that example. If not, in 10 years' time there will be 5.3 million Chinese on this small area.
The other problem is pensions. There are pensions for those over 75; but I cannot discover the average age of the Chinese. Whether they have much expec- tation of drawing their pensions for a long time, I do not know. I should like to see the elderly single people, who are in great numbers but who are obviously rather neglected, given some more help. I should like to make a suggestion: that we might suggest to the Government of Hong Kong that there be a tax on tourists going to hotels. There is a very good tourist industry. If you go to France you pay tax on the hotel bill according to the number of days that you stay. At one time we thought of introducing such a tax in this country; but I suggest that it might be useful in Hong Kong,
I would mention also the fact that women's progress is quite considerable in Hong Kong. They had the first woman stockbroker and the first woman to be ordained in the Church of England. Their youth organisations are doing well. If in proportion to the population we could say that we had 60,000 youth in uniformed organisations, we should be delighted; but we have, of course, a great many other organisations run by the Church and voluntary organisations which do a great job in helping young people. The British Council should be mentioned too because they are a very great asset and are much appreciated by the people of Hong Kong.
My Lords, I finish by saying that there is still a great deal of superstition in Hong Kong, and among the Chinese
When the Queen and her family visited Hong Kong, the first reigning Monarch to do so, they found that it was on the birthday of Ten Han, the goddess of Heaven and the protect- ress of seafarers. I hope that this augers well for the future of Hong Kong,
in. general. too, that everybody has holidays with pay; but still there is no payment for rest days. I think this is unfortunate, because it means that people do not take their rest when they should. Therefore, I should like to see payment on rest days, if possible.
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