XN000022-1973-11-20 — Page 11

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Tuesday, November 20, 1973

INDUSTRIALISTS WARNED AGAINST COMPLACENCY

Mr. T.K. Ann, Chairman of the newly set up Hong Kong Training

Council, today urged industrialists to continue striving for improvements

instead of being content with past achievements,

Speaking at the Council's first meeting, held this afternoon in

the Urban Council Chamber, Mr. Ann said that while Hong Kong had succeeded

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in the first phase of its "industrial evolution" with an almost total

absence of planning in industrial training and education, there was no

room for complacency.

He pointed out that labour costs in Hong Kong were no longer law

and the only way for Hong Kong's industries to remain.competitive was to

become more and more sophisticated.

This called for products of better quality and higher productivity-

which demanded in turn better trained technicians and craftsmen to plan

and produce them, he said.

Industrialists could caly plan for the future with confidence

and invest in their business when they were reasonably sure that technical

manpower of a quality able to meet new demands was readily available, Mr.

Ann said.

"Moreover, when this happens, foreign investments in the way of

high technology which we desperately want to attract at the present stage

of our development will be forthcoming," he added.

/He saw

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