XN000022-1995-11-09 — Page 2

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Transcript of the Governor's media session

The following is a transcript of the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten's media session after the Governor's Summit Meeting on Employment today (Thursday):

Governor: Good afternoon. We've had a good and instructive meeting. I think for me the two most important things were first of all that there's a genuine wish to see a co- operative approach to the problems that we face of job creation over the coming years and secondly, I think that there was today very much of a focus on the measures that we need to take in order to sort things out in the medium and long-term and make sure that Hong Kong has the best possible strategy for job creation and further economic growth.

We reported back on the measures that we've taken since the last meeting on employment, five or six months ago, and in subsequent discussion I think there was agreement on the following points:

First of all that we need to continue to take more vigorous measures to get rid of illegal employment and to deal with abuse in the existing schemes for labour importation. There was quite a lot of strong feeling that sentences should be a genuine deterrent.

Secondly, we believe that there should be more effort and resources going into job matching efforts. With 50,000 vacancies it's obviously important to match those to those who are seeking work as rapidly as we can.

Thirdly, it was agreed that we needed, with the Employees Retraining Board and the Vocational Training Council to map out over the coming months what their role should be so that we can come back in six months' time and discuss a longer term job creation, job enhancing programme for Hong Kong. We need to look at what's required to give Hong Kong the jobs that we need in five to ten years' time, and there were a number of very helpful suggestions made about retraining and about the Vocational Training Council's role, for example by the new Chairman of the ERB, Mr Tam Yui-chung. So we will be looking forward to working with the ERB and the Vocational Training Council to work to map out their strategy.