XN000022-1995-10-12 — Page 24

23.

Question: Good morning your Excellency, What I am concerned about is that with the papers, the legislators, and the District Board members, everybody seems to be shouting for stopping the import of labour. A few facts: there are a few projects outside the Airport related contracts which are also very very large contracts and are vital to the future of Hong Kong. One is the Route Three Country Park which will take all the heavy container traffic once it's completed off the Tuen Mun Highway. The other one is the strategic drainage which is the new sewer running from Chai Wan to Tsing Yi. These contracts have started earlier on this year and the contractors have applied through the Labour Department six or seven months ago for local labour for the positions of miners and tunnel equipment operators. We've also advertised in the Chinese press for the same and the English press over the past seven months. They've also approached the trade unions over the last two months to see if they could come up with some job matching if you like. The Labour Department in all fairness have tried their best to find somebody for these positions and probably just over a handful have been found with the experience required. But, for one to say stop the import of labour it's true to say your Excellency, that there are no such positions for miners or tunnel equipment operators in Hong Kong and that if something is not done to grant an import quota, these contracts are going to be well behind programme.

Governor: You are making a powerful argument for a case with which I sympathise, but in approaching this problem we have got to be balanced. There is a different quota, and as you know for the ACP projects, some people say that we shouldn't let anybody in at all for the ACP projects, which isn't just the Airport platform, it's the related projects as well. If we were to do that we would fetch up by delaying by a very long time the completion of the Airport which itself is going to produce jobs. It would lead to greater unemployment in Hong Kong, rather than the reverse. We do need people as you were saying, to come in with special skills to help us here in Hong Kong and that's why we haven't just said no importation of labour, but we've proposed a much smaller scheme and one which is more targeted on special skills. In the particular cases you mentioned and the sewage strategy, the 9.3 billion scheme is, if sewage can be in this category, near to my own heart because I think it is very important to our environment. If there are particular problems in these areas when I get back to the office I'll get my colleagues in the Labour Department to look at your case but I do hope that people who are listening will have heard what you have said because you have made a very powerful argument for allowing some importation of skilled labour into Hong Kong rather than just thinking that we can just completely slam the door. That would be no way to improve the competitiveness of Hong Kong.