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Transcript of Chief Secretary's media session
Following is the transcript of the media session by the Chief Secretary, Mrs Anson Chan, after opening the Lam Tin Woman Health Centre today (Tuesday).
CS: Good afternoon everyone. I'll like to say something about retirement schemes. Ast you all know, we concluded a public consultation exercise on an earlier proposal to establish an old persons' pension fund. After extensive consultation, unfortunately, we did not get majority support for the Government's proposal. This is of course a great disappointment to those of us within the Administration who still believed that in terms of meeting the long-term financial needs of the elderly, the original OPS scheme was in fact the best way forward. However, since we did not receive majority support, the Government has a choice of either not proceeding with any retirement schemes at all, or to think of an alternative to the OPS that might receive majority support both from legislative councillors and from the community at large, And the Government believed that as there is a real need to address the financial security of those reaching retirement, the option of not doing anything is really not the right way forward. So we have in recent weeks been consulting legislative councillors on an alternative to the OPS which is what we call a mandatory privately-operated provident fund, MPF for short. At the Legislative Council meeting on March 8, we will be moving a motion to debate the proposal of establishing an MPF. The purpose of this debate would be to ascertain whether we have majority support in the Legislative Council for such a scheme to be set up. If there is majority support, then it is the Government's intention to establish such an MPF scheme as soon as possible. Of course, we will need to give further consideration to the details of such a scheme, and there are a number of aspects. that require detailed consideration with the help of a consultant. It will also be necessary for us as soon as possible to consult with the Chinese on the establishment of such a scheme. But a great deal will depend on the outcome of this motion debate on March 8, and I do urge all legislative councillors to give careful consideration to this motion and to indicate in clear terms whether they support it or don't support it. But I want to make one thing abundantly clear and that is that the Government will not proceed with such a scheme unless we get a clear mandate from the legislative councillors.