XN000022-1995-06-01 — Page 14

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On CSSAs. I think the Honourable Member would be surprised, though doubtless gratified, if I were to announce this afternoon what I intend to say in my speech to the Legislative Council in the autumn. But my honourable friend, the Financial Secretary, has been discussing the next Budget with Honourable Members, I think we have an idea of the priority which many Honourable Members attach to CSSAs and I think Honourable Members must have some notion themselves of the fiscal parameters within which we work and intend to continue to work as a matter of good macro-economics and prudent financial management. But I think that all I can say beyond that is that the Honourable Member should watch this space.

Dr Yeung Sum (through interpreter): Well Mr President, in that case the Government doesn't have any concrete solution for the unemployed workers. The Government is always talking about reviews and reviews which have become a procrastinating tactic. So are we being told that we are to wait for the outcome of reviews calmly?

Governor: Well, I hope that whatever the Honourable Member and others do will be calm. I am challenged by the Honourable Member to repeat myself. There are things that we're doing and not just considering doing. There are actions we're taking and not just matters that we're reviewing. We're extending the job placement scheme from five local employment services to all nine local employment services across Hong Kong. It's a scheme that we only started recently. It's a scheme that we started with the intention of monitoring it and seeing if it needed to be extended later, but we've decided to extend it straightaway to the whole of the community and we hope that it puts more people in touch with job vacancies more rapidly. Secondly, we're attempting to relate retraining to vacancies in our existing programmes and I want to make it clear to the Honourable Member that so far as I'm concerned and so far as we're concerned, none of our efforts in the retraining field will be constrained by shortage of resources. Thirdly, we've doubled the number of people who were involved in trying to catch those who are illegally employed and we've also sharpened the penalties, stiffened the penalties for illegal employment. So those are three measures that have been taken straightaway and we intend to take more.

In the longer term what is the answer to the continuing export of some manufacturing and service jobs to other places in the region and to mainland China? The answer isn't to stop that process any more than it would have been five years or 10 years or 20 years ago. The answer is to try to ensure that we re-skill and upgrade the skills of the Hong Kong workforce and remain a competitive environment for investors and that we intend to do.