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community relief payments. Unfortunately, these modest proposals were scathingly attacked by the capitalists. They attempted to throw obstacles in the way of launching improved labour and social welfare schemes by arguing that such schemes would hinder local economic growth and development. This kind of egoism in complete disregard of others' hardship is indeed a shame to the people of Hong Kong. Although we do not advocate taking radical measures to change the existing situation of marked disparity between the rich and the poor, we do consider that such moderate reforms should be carried out without delay, failing which labour-management disputes will crop up, to the detriment of the community as a whole.
(4) In order to give a facelifting to the present demoralizing social trend and to stimulate a greater sense of social responsibility among the younger generation, it still depends very much on a radical improvement in the education policy and its implementation in Hong Kong. Although the Government has decided to carry out a nine-year universal education scheme in 1978, a lot still need to be done on the character-building of our youths because the existing education system has made little achievement in this aspect. The young people still lack confidence in their own future and their duties towards the society.
The cramming educational method and the highly selective examination are still prevalent. Confronted with these anomalies, the Education Committee which is responsible for the education policy of Hong Kong and the Education Department which is the executive arm, seem to be quite incapable of coping with the present situation. And this is a major duty which the Government owes us. Moreover, the Government is still unable to initiate a system to raise the salaries and to enhance the professional standard of the teachers of over half of the private schools in Hong Kong and as a result, these teachers are never certain of what lies ahead of them. To add to their distress, the Government is discriminating against these private schools and never give them the least encouragement. As to the teachers of Government and subsidized schools, the Government also fails to improve their conditions of service, thus eliminating any chance of raising the standard of education. For instance, the 1:1 ratio between the primary teachers and classes, the promotion system of the primary and secondary school teachers and the cramming teaching methods and the highly selective examinations which I just mentioned are still awaiting a practical solution.
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(5) The Government carries out its day-to-day work through the middle and lower ranking officers in the 40-odd departments, who make up over 90% of all civil servants in Hong Kong. However, many of them are dissatisfied with the unreasonable distribution of work and the unfair treatment in salary and conditions of service. The most obvious inequality in this respect is that the high ranking officers are entitled to housing allowance and allocation of accommodation while officers in the low income bracket are not. Moreover, being the largest employer in Hong Kong, the Government has not yet established a truly representative joint negotiation machinery. The existing Senior Civil Service Council is far from being perfect, not to mention the fact that it represents only a small part of the civil service. As such, the majority of the middle and lower grades have lost their faith in the salary structure and conditions of service offered by the Government. Although they have not yet resorted to taking drastic actions to force the Government to give in, they will eventually be compelled to take this course of action or passive measures if the Government continues to maintain its present attitude and adopt the same disintegrating tactics in dealing with matters concerning this group of officers. Under no circumstances would this do any good to both the Government and the public. We have learned too many lessons of this kind in the past.
(6) On the setup of the Legislative Council, we elected Urban Councillors once proposed that there should be representatives elected by indirect suffrage to speak for the public at large in the Legislative Council but unfortunately, our proposal was not accepted by the Governor, who instead, only introduced more appointed members to the Legislative Council as a palliative measure to calm down public outcry. Moreover, both elected and appointed members of the Urban Council opined that the name of the Urban Council should be changed to "City Council" and that Urban Councillors should gradually be allowed to play a greater role in local administration but their suggestion was dismissed by the Chief Secretary in his capacity as the representative of the ruler of Hong Kong. How can this unreasonable and arbitrary attitude convince others that the British and Hong Kong Governments are really sincere in their efforts to protect the interests of the people of Hong Kong?
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