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Governor's question and answer session in LegCo
The following is a transcript of the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten's question and answer session in Legislative Council today (Thursday):
Mr Lee Cheuk-yan (through interpreter): Mr President and Mr Governor, I would like to talk about residential places for the severely mentally handicapped adults. We now have a shortfall of some 2,000 places and with regard to the waiting queues, now in the waiting list we are still only dealing with those already registered back in 1987. So you will have to wait some eight years before you can even be considered for a residential place. So Mr Governor, for these severely mentally handicapped adults, how long do they have to wait before all those on the waiting list will be dealt with? And I know that the severely mentally handicapped children's parents are also very worried. So we want to know the time frame. When will all the registered people on the list be cleared?
Governor: The Honourable Member raises an important question to which, and to the first part of which, the simple answer is that the severely mentally handicapped and their families have already had to wait a great deal too long for residential places. In 1992, we set out a programme for meeting the then targets in the Green Paper on Rehabilitation, targets both for day-care places and training places and for residential accommodation. As we made clear in our progress report last Autumn, for a variety of reasons, which I can go into in detail a little later if the Honourable Member would like, we found it more difficult to deliver places at the rate we promised than we would have wished. By and large we're going to be able to achieve our targets on day- care places. We're having more difficulty with hostel places and we're having more difficulties, for a number of reasons including the provisional purchase of premises, and including I have to say, some hostility in parts of the community to the establishment of residential homes for the severely mentally handicapped.
We are at present looking at ways in which any slippage or any shortfall in the provision of places can be dealt with as rapidly as possible and can be limited to the smallest amount possible. I want to make it clear to the Honourable Member that even though we are having difficulty in achieving that target, I intend to do everything we reasonably can to deliver on the promises that we've made to the mentally handicapped. I know that the parents of the severely mentally handicapped who are among the real heroes and heroines of this and every other community have addressed Honourable Members on the subject and have set out some of their anxieties. I'm intending to arrange to meet them myself so I can go through with them precisely what the position is and what we are trying to do in order to cope with the problem. Not least by, if we can, expediting the completion of the project in Aberdeen which I think as the Honourable Member will know is going to be responsible for a large proportion of the places.