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SEM on shelving of Old Age Pension Scheme
Following is a speech by the Secretary for Education and Manpower, Mr Michael Leung, on the motion debate on shelving of the Old Age Pension Scheme in the Legislative Council:
Mr President,
I will focus my response on Mr Yeung Sum's first part motion, my colleague, Secretary for Health and Welfare, will speak on the CSSA payments.
I should start by stating the basic policy on retirement protection, that is, we are talking about only one form of retirement protection. It is either on RPS or an OPS or as we have just agreed an MPF. It must be a system which is practicable, affordable, and sustainable. Acceptable to the people of Hong Kong to this Council and to the future sovereign power. Without these conditions, any scheme would be totally not acceptable, and certainly not possible to be implemented. Now that we have agreed to the MPF in an earlier motion, it is not our intention to reopen the question of the OPS. My response is simply to reply to some of the allegations made by some Members on our handling of the OPS. And I shall do so in as neutral a language as possible without causing some ill feelings. I know that some Members' feelings were hurt because they have perhaps been regretting what they have done before but I am, as I said, I could not assist them in this respect. It is a matter of the past. We cannot turn the clock back.
What I spoke in this Council on 9 November 1994, I assured Members that we would consider the more than six thousand submissions on the OPS with great care and with an open mind. At the same time, I said that Government would implement the OPS subject to, among other things, endorsement by the community of our proposals as we put them. This we had made clear as far back as December 1993 when the proposal for OPS was announced for the first time in this Council.
As Members will recall, the consultation period on the OPS ended on 31 October 1994. We established a task force, specially, to analyse the submissions received, and to propose alternative recommendations where these were appropriate and acceptable.