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We have, you OK? OK, I've just been saying that unemployment has been coming down from last year but if you're unemployed it's still not much comfort.
We've been trying to help in a number of ways. First of all, we've been trying to develop the programmes and the services provided by our employment department. The local employment services provided by the department have found about 12,000 jobs for people in the first six months of this year, matching people to vacancies and we've got a particular programme run by the local employment services called the Job Matching Programme which people apply to join and about 80 per cent of those who are registered with the Job Matching Programme, that's 80 per cent of the 4,000, found jobs in the first six months of the year. So we are, I think, developing more sensitive and more effective ways of getting people back to work because while there are 90,000 people unemployed in Hong Kong, there are probably 50 or 60,000 registered vacancies. So one wants to try to get the people into the vacancies as rapidly as possible.
We're also, as I mentioned earlier, reviewing our whole training and retraining effort, so that we can try to give people who may've lost one job because of industrial or technological change, for example in the textile industry or in printing, to develop a skill which they can use elsewhere.
And finally, we've tried to find a consensus between employers and labour as far as job importation is concerned. We've introduced a new supplementary labour scheme which is administered in effect by both employers and unions and I think whilst there have been some teething problems with it, and while there are some employers who think that we shouldn't have any restrictions, I think it's a scheme which by and large commands a broad measure of consent among employers representatives and union representatives.
So I hope in those sort of ways we've helped deal with the problem but overall the best way in which Hong Kong can produce more jobs, and we produce on average about 2.5 per cent more jobs every year, the best way we can do that is making sure that our economy remains as competitive as possible.
Question: Mr Governor, I represent a group of squatter residents. Now before March '96 - or rather you pledged in '92 that by March '96 all squatter-huts on Crown Land would be cleared. But now we are at the end of '96 - now we live in Diamond Hill, there are some 6,000 of us - still we have heard nothing, no news at all. In this policy address you said that by the end of March there were already arrangements but we have not heard any news about the clearance at all. Now we have been living in those huts for some three decades; they are dilapidated but none of us dare to refurbish them because of the pending clearance. So I hope you will live up to your pledge, I hope that you will be able to complete this task before you leave Hong Kong.
Governor: Well, as I think you know, I have visited Diamond Hill