-
22 -
Governor: Can I answer that question as positively as possible, but it is not quite as easy as in a sense you made it sound. My first point is that disabled people deserve to be helped to get a job. But it is not a question of doing them a favour. Any employer who takes on somebody who has got a disability but is committed and hardworking is doing themselves a favour. They are helping themselves by employing somebody who is going to be committed to their organisation and going to do an outstanding job. So I think we want to stop thinking about employment for the disabled as though we are handing out charity. We are not. We are ensuring that people with real abilities can contribute those abilities to the rest of society.
We have had three summits to try to push employers and government into doing more and we have had some success. Last year, despite the difficulties on the employment front, we I think placed through government services about 1,400 more people with a disability, we have gradually increased the number who are employed in government. It is now up to about 4,200, and we have had a voluntary target for the community which we exceeded last year, we got up to 550, and we have set a new target for 700. The private sector varies enormously, some people are very good, some people, frankly, do not put enough into it, working in exactly the same sector. So I think everybody has got to make an effort.
Now you mention - which is why I said it is not quite as easy as it might have sounded - you mention the position of the blind working as telephonists. We know a bit about this, we have somebody very close to us in Government House who is in that position. But what has been happening is that modern technology has very often put out of jobs blind people who have taken jobs as telephonists and what we then have to do is to try to ensure that they are retrained to do some other job which they are capable of. So while there is still room for quite a lot of people with sight disability in working as telephonists, we should not think that in the long term, with changes in technology, that is going to be, as it were, a secure area. It is imperative that we give people more retraining the blind, the mentally-handicapped, the mentally-ill so that they can contribute as much as they have got to the rest of society.
-
-
Question: My name is Tony James (phonetic). I just find it disturbing, listening to this morning's activities, that there are certainly some people in HK who tend to criticise the existing freedom of the press that we certainly enjoy, and the government initiatives, certainly that have been done since '84, and I guess in particular yourself - the criticism of yourself. But yet I wonder what their comments will be like in four- and-a-half years time when the new CE of the SAR has completed four years, and I just wonder if the new CE, when he or she has finished his four year term, whether they will certainly be sitting in RTHK fielding questions. And I guess - and it is not a question - it is quite advantageous to have the ability to have hindsight and look back at some of the things that have or have not been achieved. But certainly I do find it disturbing that people can criticise without necessarily knowing what our future holds.