12.
Secondly, I am aware of the fact that there are four THA's left. Four of the older ones. It's still our intention to clear them all by the end of 1996/97. It's an important issue this. Previously the clearance programme of THA's didn't take any account of the age of the temporary housing area. What happened was that we cleared according to the Housing Authority's development needs. I thought that was wrong because obviously the older THA's provided much less reasonable accommodation. So we have been clearing all the older ones and the whole 14 will have gone by 1996/97. By the end of 1997, whereas there were 55 temporary housing areas in 1992, there will be just 12 left. I wish, and this is the point I started with, I wish that we could get rid of all of the temporary housing areas. Unfortunately, because we've got, as I mentioned earlier, still a large number of immigrants coming into Hong Kong, that hasn't been possible but I very much hope that the SAR Government will be able to complete the job by about the year 2000.
Question (in Chinese): I would like to thank you for allowing me to express my views for all these years. Now of course my views are in the interests of Hong Kong people. Mr Patten, I hope in the coming 200 odd days you will pay attention to the problem of unemployment in Hong Kong because of imported workers, a lot of people are now unemployed. Now the present Government's policy is that when anything happens you should always look after the local people first before you look after others. It's like if you win the Mark Six ticket, of course you will first of all take care of your own children before you look after your relatives. Now we have a high unemployment rate in Hong Kong. People are unemployed here but they can't turn to crime, they can't have unemployment relief, assistance. So I think the Government should not just look after the interests of employers. Employers have all the money they wish, they could pay more to get local workers. They shouldn't mind paying that much. Now just because they want to save money, so they are using cheap labour, that's why they're importing labour and at the end of the day Hong Kong people suffer because they are unemployed. Even if they do not turn to crime they will still add to the burden of tax payers. Hong Kong people do like to work. They attach much importance to their work. So in the next 200 odd days before you leave Mr Governor, I hope you'll pay attention to the workers in Hong Kong. You must work for the welfare of workers here. So that's why I'm speaking in the interests of Hong Kong people. What I said, I hope is in the interest of Hong Kong people. I wonder if you think I'm right or not?
Governor: I think they do! In the last nine or ten months we've fortunately seen unemployment, which had peaked, I think, at 3.6 per cent last November, come down to about 2.8 per cent. So unemployment has been coming down and by international standards is pretty low. Indeed by European or North American standards is very low. But that's not very much comfort if you're actually unemployed. For anyone who's unemployed the figure is 100 per cent and we need to help everybody who's unemployed back into a job as rapidly as possible.