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Question: That is all I have to say, your Excellency, and I hope the District Board Members, and the Legislative Council keep an open mind on this. There are certain skills which we definitely cannot obtain in Hong Kong. Of course, I agree with the trade unions one hundred per cent, we must give our local workforce priority, but in this particular case we haven't got the skills available in Hong Kong.
Governor: Can I add a point about, because people are concerned about unemployment and understandably. We have very high standards in Hong Kong. Elsewhere 3.5% unemployed wouldn't be regarded with great concern and indeed if you look back to the early 1980's, financial secretaries opening their budgets, used to describe 3.5% unemployment as full employment, but we set very high standards here in Hong Kong. We've got to try to meet them, but it would be crazy in trying to do so to start doing things which had long-term very serious effects on our economic competitiveness. Nobody would thank me and nobody would thank the trade unions if that resulted.
Question: Good morning, I am glad to read from the newspaper today that there will be a boost to the CSSA. Mr Governor I hope you will use your high level wisdom and perhaps impress it upon the British and Chinese leaders on the issue of retirement benefits for junior civil servants, of course, on the one hand I am fighting for myself, but then for the other junior civil servants who earn low salaries, I am also fighting for their cause because some of them just get five to seven hundred dollars. I don't get more than a thousand dollars myself, so when the economy becomes better perhaps there could be some consideration about this matter.
Governor: If you've got a particular problem, Mr Chu, related to your own circumstances, if you would like to drop me a letter at Government House and mark it personal to me, I'll see if we can sort things out for you, because obviously it is not easy to go into personal problems over the radio. Can I just make a couple of points. first of all we have recognised that many civil servants have concerns not necessarily about the level of their pension payment, but about whether their pension will as promised go on being paid after 1997 and that is why we have put aside about seven billion so that we can provide as it were some financial security as well which I hope will put people's minds at rest. Secondly, you mentioned CSSA review, it maybe that it is not the right moment to go into details about it but we have acted very promptly on our initial findings in that review. The review isn't completed, but I was absolutely determined that we should take some early decisions to deal with those people who were in the most vulnerable conditions.