XN000022-1973-10-17 — Page 62

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Wednesday, October 17, 1973

To those of us who are urban in our habits this programme may

seen peripheral but to my mind it is central. The mountains and the

beaches are for the many what the golf course and the yacht are for the few.

And if these magnificent natural facilities are to be enjoyed to the full

and not to be destroyed by misuse, they must be catered for and administered

just as much as, say, the playgrounds and swimming complexes in the

urban areas.

Traffic and Transport, Land Policy and Pollution

Another wide field to which we must now address ourselves with

even greater effort and I do not decry what has already been done and is

being done - is that which might be described under the heading of Traffic,

Transport, Land Policy and Pollution. They are inter-related and intractible

subjects which are as hard to solve in Hong Kong as in any other of the

great conurbations, and rendered more difficult by the great concentration

of population and the limitations of space. I am sure that the drafting of

sound and comprehensive policies will be greatly facilitated by the appointment

of a single senior officer, the Secretary for Environment, to evolve and

co-ordinate programmes. He is, I am satisfied, undaunted by this daunting

responsibility. He will be outlining his approach himself at a later stage

in this debate.

The most dramatic single item in this group of subject, though by

no means necessarily the most important, is the mass transit project, which

I confess I prefer to call the Underground Railway. The negotiation of the

contract is in the hands of the Financial Secretary and the Steering Group

under the direction of the Executive Council and I have nothing to add about

the course of the negotiations today.

/Even when...............