Transcript of the Governor's media session
Following is the transcript of the media session by the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, after the Summit on Employment this (Thursday) afternoon:
Governor: Good afternoon. We have had another useful discussion on employment. This is the third of the summits that we have had on employment. The first was in the summer of last year, then we had a second one in November of last year when the unemployment rate stood at 3.6 per cent, and this was the third and it was against a background, I think, of considerable improvement in the employment situation which we very much hope will be sustained.
Unemployment now stands at 2.9 per- fallen from 3.6 per cent. It is the lowest level for 14 months and the aggregate figure is that the number of people unemployed has fallen from 110,000 to about 90,000. There have also been improvements in the underemployment figures as well, so it definitely represents a move in the right direction which I think is largely a result of the figures for the creation of new jobs and the figure for the number of people in the labour market coming into line. They had drifted out of balance last year with such a large number of people joining our labour force here in Hong Kong, both because of returning emigrants and for other demographic reasons as well.
The improvement in the position does not make any of us complacent, and I don't think should take our eye off the long term which all my colleagues, the other panellists representing employers and employees, were very keen to focus on today.
There are a number of things that have to concern us and continue to concern us. The first is the improvement of our labour market programmes. We have, I think, successfully developed our local employment services and our job matching programme. The numbers who are gaining employment with the help of those programmes has increased very steadily but we obviously want to be even more proactive and even more successful with those programmes.
We have also, of course, taken tougher measures against illegal employment, increasing the number of people who have been involved in policing the labour market and increasing the penalties for abuses and for breaking the law importing illegal labour.