XN000022-1973-10-16 — Page 9

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Tuesday, October 16, 1973

In more recent reports, it had repeatedly been alleged that 36,000

children were illegally working in Hong Kong's factories.

These allegations were apparently based on a revival of the 1971

Census report published more than a year ago. But a proper reading of the

report chowed that the 36,000 children referred to were in the 10-14 age group

of the table headed "economically-active population." They included 19,000

14-year olds, who may legally work in factories if they wished.

The under-fourteens, all but less than 2,000 of whom were 12 or 13

years old, could legally work anywhere except in factories and licensed promises

as messengers in offices, in agriculture and so forth. "And that is where the

great number of them do work," he said.

"There is no doubt that some of them are working in factories, However,

during our special campaigns to fight child employment this summer, 1,650

factories, specially selected for their tendency to employ children,

visited. But we found only 90 suspected offenders, employing 123 children

a far cry from the tens of thousands alleged," he said.

Prosecutions would follow, he said, and later this year the task of

getting sufficient evidence to prosecute would be made more simple by the

introduction of new juvenile identity cards bearing a photograph and full name.

Also recently, there had been a rash of claims that wages in Hong

Kong were low. But the fact was that the real wage index had risen by 59%

since March 1964 - an average annual increase of 5.3%.

/This was