HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
————一九八九年七月十九日
香港立法局
19 July 1989
131
is needed if we are to make substantial improvements relatively quickly. We will monitor progress ruthlessly through the two-yearly reviews of the White Paper, and this will also give us room to manoeuvre if the situation so demands.
We will shortly be consulting industry over some major initiatives. For instance we think that it is particularly important and right to bring about a reduction of sulphur in fuel oil, for we all have to breathe and we all have a right to breathe clean air. And we also attach great urgency to tightening up the Water Pollution Control Ordinance to reduce the amounts of industrial effluents polluting our waters. I hope the industralists and legislators who represent them will realize that the reduction of the pollution of our waters is the aim of the Water Pollution Control Ordinance. And if delays, exceptions and exemptions are continuosly insisted upon, this aim will simply not be achieved. And we will not have cleaner waters. These two pieces are perhaps our most urgent pieces of legislation, but the White Paper on pollution seeks public acceptance of a simpler and more basic message that no one has the right to pollute and any industrial activity which creates pollution must include measures for its abatement or cease. And further, industry including farming must not seek public subsidy for abatement; the polluter should himself pay.
While placing responsibility firmly on polluters to "put their houses in order", the White Paper also points out that in very many cases it is relatively inexpensive to install anti-pollution measures. I would like to see more small factories and workshops making use of the services provided by the Productivity Council. The Government will also encourage such initiatives as the centre of Environmental Technology for Industry established at the City Polytechnic in co-operation with the Productivity Council, and with financial assistance from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. The centre will demonstrate non-polluting treatment and recovery systems for industrial waste, and will lay particular emphasis on assisting small and medium-sized factories. We should also encourage more and better long-term research and development in the clean technology, pollution control and waste recovery fields. And plans such as these are being considered.
Sir, the major strategies we propose in the White Paper are not cheap. As His Excellency the Governor mentioned in his October address, Sir, the major review of the territory's sewerage facilities is nearing completion, and we now estimate that a programme for the construction of sewage collection, treatment and disposal facilities, costing about $12 billion, will be required.
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