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because our health requirements are not up to standard, we will try to improve them.
Mr. Chairman, because of what I have said in the first paragraph, I can only conditionally support the motion.
MR. AMBROSE K. C. CHOI (in Cantonese): Mr. Chairman, it is not altogether wrong for the Government to cut down its expenditures when confronted with financial difficulties under the current economic recession, but only expenditure that can be cut down should be cut down and careful judgement should be made so that the relative importance of all items of expenditure is duly recognized. It is strongly urged that expenditure on public security, education and medical services should, under no circumstances, be reduced. Public security concerns the safety of life and property; education affects the development of our younger generation, and medical services safeguard our health. The curtailment of such expenditure would surely make us feel disturbed.
The public is much alarmed that recently the state of law and order in Hong Kong has further deteriorated. In order to get greater protection for their life and property, they all hope that the police would strengthen its force and improve its equipment so as to restore law and order. However, at this time when violent crimes are getting more and more rampant, the police are also practising economy and provisions on public security are being cut down. Such acts run counter to the wish of the general public. I have reason to believe that most people in Hong Kong will agree that the maintenance of law and order is something more important and urgent than anything else. It is common knowledge that the deteriorating state of law and order and the infestation of thugs and robbers may bring Hong Kong into a dark age in which everyone lives in fear. When that time comes, there will be no more commercial and industrial development and all trades will become stagnant. By then, Hong Kong will be in a hopeless state and how could there be economic prosperity? That is why I hold the view that provisions on public security should in no way be cut. Though the police have stressed that the economy measure would not have any effect on the general efficiency and morale of the force, one thing we can be sure of is that it does have a psychological effect on the public mind.
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the streets, but will also benefit the society as a whole. The only important natural resource of Hong Kong is her people. It will be a dereliction of duty if we fail to fulfil our responsibility towards the community and our next generation if a large proportion of our population is not adequately educated. It is apparent that the axing of expenditure on education has caused the school building programme to slow down. Take, for instance, the foundation stone for Yuen Long Merchants' Association Middle School which has been laid for a year, but up to now, construction work has not been started. Thus, it will not be too difficult to guess what other ill-effects the cutting of expenditure on education will cause. To prevent young people who have lost their opportunities for schooling from going astray and becoming a nuisance to society, Government must solve the serious problem of shortage of secondary school places as soon as possible. In my view, if the Government could solicit outside loans for the construction of the MTR, why couldn't it also raise funds by a similar method to expand secondary education? To provide education is the best investment in the cultivation of our next generation and to look after the drop-outs among our youth is an unshirkable responsibility of the Government. I am of the opinion that if we can smoothly and speedily expand the capacity of secondary school, we shall have enough places to provide schooling for each and every youth and shall be able to bring the introduction of a 9-year free education scheme into practice at an early date. Government should, by all means, give serious consideration to this scheme and have it implemented early. If this scheme is allowed to be dragged on to the detriment of those young dropouts, this will only create very serious social problems. This is a matter which should not be overlooked.
With regard to medical service, I think that in order to give the public greater protection for their health, it is necessary to expand medical facilities and increase the number of hospital beds and this is a matter of great urgency. All along, the medical service offered by the Government has been far from adequate to cope with public demand. The authority, while attributing this state of affairs to the shortage of qualified doctors, is cutting down the allocation for medical services. To the public, this is a very irresponsible move. The Government has spent a lot of tax-payers' money in training doctors and if these doctors are not appointed to serve the public after their training, it is tantamount to wasting the tax-payers' money. This is surely not acceptable to the tax-payers. The curtailment of medical expenditure will give rise to a shortage of medical staff and will thus affect the service to the patients. There are many items of Government expenditure that can be cut and it seems that there is no need to practise
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