Sir,
Speech by the Secretary for Education & Manpower in the Legislative Council on 25 June 1986 to move the Second Reading of
the Employees' Compensation (Amendment) Bill 1986
I rise to move that the Employees' Compensation
(Amendment) Bill 1986 be read a second time.
Section 17B (1) of the Employees' Compensation.
Ordinance empowers the Court to cancel a compensation agreement between an employee and his employer where it was entered into in ignorance of, or under a mistake as
The to, the true nature of the employee's injury.
intention of this section is to give the employee the
opportunity to claim further compensation if more accurate
information becomes available as to the effect of the
injury.
It was intended that a mistaken assessment of
the extent, as well as the nature, of an injury should be
a ground for cancellation of an agreement. In a recent
employees' compensation case, however, the Court rejected an application for cancellation of an agreement where the extent of the employee's injury was subsequently found to
The Court held that the have been mistakenly assessed.
expression 'true nature' denoted only the quality of the
injury, and not its extent.