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further works at Junk Bay, and the Tsing Yi North Bridge and its approaches. In the private sector too, if Hong Kong is to retain its place in the world, as I am sure it will, as a major manufacturer and exporter, as a communications hub for both sea and air traffic, and as a regional provider of special services, the demand for high quality engineering will not slacken and indeed ought to increase.

It will be for you, Mr President, as a profession and an institution to maintain and improve standards. For our part, we in Government recognise that good engineering starts in the educational system.

In the next financial year we will be spending 5.7 billion dollars on education with 1.3 billion on the two Universities, the Polytechnic and the Baptist College. Apart from increasing the enrolment of Engineering students in the University and the Polytechnic - and remember that about 600 engineering students will graduate this

summer there are plans well advanced for a second Polytechnic. Nor have we neglected the essential back-up which engineers need. Between them, the Polytechnic and the Technical Institutes will produce over 5 250 engineering technicians and craftsmen this year. The Vocational Training Council is now in full operation and the Construction Industry Training Authority have just opened their second Training Centre. We, like the Institution, are anxious to encourage the youth of Hong Kong to take up Engineering, and its related technical support occupations, as a profession because Hong Kong will not prosper in this modern world

if they do not.

Mr President, it is not my intention this evening to lecture you on the professional aspects of engineering. There are many here

But I this evening who are better qualified than I am to do that. trust you will not take it amiss if I remind you that no profession is complete unto itself. Each profession must serve the community of which it forms part. And that community has a legitimate interest in what you do and how you do it. It is the community who pay for our public works programmes and it is they who will benefit or suffer from the products

of those programmes.

The community too will purchase and use the

products which you plan, design and produce. I trust, therefore, that your Institution will always keep an open ear to the views of that

community.

/You have

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