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On efforts that have been made to facilitate travel in and out of the territory, Mr Lai said new computer systems installed at the control points would reduce processing time for machine-readable passports by 20 seconds per transaction.
"Customers of the various services such as identity card, registration of births, deaths and marriage, passports issue will also benefit from the improved computer system," he said.
End/Saturday, October 14, 1995
Increased police presence to combat crime
Increased Police presence on Hong Kong's streets has yielded encouraging results in lowering the rate of violent crimes, the Secretary for Security, Mr Peter Lai, said today (Saturday).
Speaking at a briefing session for Legislative Councillors on the 1995 Policy Address, Mr Lai said compared to the same period three years ago, the first eight months of this year had seen a significant 61 per cent fall in armed robberies.
"There was also a decrease by 18 per cent in the number of bank robberies, a remarkable 83 per cent decrease in the number of luxury car reported missing, and a drop of six per cent in the number of triad related crimes," he said.
Although the overall crime rate in the past three years had gone up by about six per cent, the recent increase was mainly due to a rise in petty crimes such as shopthefts, minor thefts and narcotics offences, he said.
"However, during the same period, the violent crime rate, unlike that in other metropolitan cities, has actually fallen by some 11 per cent and the number of armed robberies has dropped by a remarkable 61 per cent," said Mr Lai.
He said compared with 1992, there was now an extra 800 police officers patrolling the streets and the Government was on course to meet the current year's commitment to deploy a further 400 policemen on the streets.