4
Of course no one pretends that Hong Kong is anything like
perfect - none of us is. There is an enormous amount to do and a
great deal of room for improvement, but the prosperity we have
achieved of recent years has enabled the Government to move beyond
its task of satisfying basic human needs, which had guided much of
our endeavours in the '50s and '60s, and to seck wider improvements
to our social services, our leisure and cultural amenities, and
our living and working environments.
The '70s saw significant advances in our education, health,
housing and social welfare programme. We now have nine years of free,
compulsory, primary and junior secondary education; also we have an
expanding, heavily subsidised, senior secondary and tertiary education
system. Our general standard of health has steadily improved too.
now comperes very favourably with that in the advanced industrialised
countries.
It
Then we have our massive Government housing programme, which
already houses over two million people, or 40 per cent of the population;
and this is planned to continue in growth at the rate of 35 000 new
flats each year.
Whole new towns are being built in the New Territories
so as to provide much-needed relief for the very congested older urban
areas.
The
I am sure you will be visiting a number of these areas,
Government has taken particular care in the planning of social services
for these new towns in order to ensure their integrated and balanced
development.
You can well imagine the challenge that such unique
opportunities present.
/In the