XN000022-1996-02-01 — Page 12

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Can I also say that I agree with the concern which the honourable member has about Hong Kong's record of industrial safety and in particular, of safety in the construction industry. We have, partly at the prompting of the honourable member and some of his colleagues, taken over the last couple of years a number of steps in the area of industrial safety which I hope will lead to a considerable improvement in our record, not just in the construction industry but in manufacturing industry as a whole. There have been some improvements in the figures, but we've still got a long way to go to meet the sort of goals which a society as prosperous and successful as this should set for itself.

On the question of abuses of the labour importation scheme, particularly in relation to the ACP. I think the honourable member is aware of the considerable efforts the Government has made over the last few months. First of all, to tighten regulations and secondly to route out abuses and thirdly to provide more information to those who come into Hong Kong to work about their rights in general and their cntitlements under their contracts in particular. Many of the proposals that we've put forward have been at the prompting of representatives of employees and I'm grateful for that. There are further proposals that we're acting on, which I hope will mean that we see no abuse in the future. We do need the importation of some labour in order to complete the ACP but, of course, priority has got to be given to local employees, not least local employees in the construction industry and the honourable member will know we've set up an office to try to ensure that we get more local employment to match local vacancies in airport core programme projects.

We will continue to pursue any instances where our labour law or our immigration law is abused by contractors or sub-contractors. It's absolutely essential that any importation of labour is pursued with the maximum integrity and that those who come and help in the building of Hong Kong enjoy the protection of our labour laws.

Mr Tsang Kin-shing (in Chinese): Mr President, I don't believe the Governor has answered one of my questions. That is, whether there will be an A & E Department in the airport in order to treat people suffering from accidents, because the airport is in a very remote place?

And then secondly, there's been dodging of wages and it is only because we've got pressure from the labour sector and we have got all these cases exposed and there's been reprisal. So would the Governor agree that from 1991 - 1996 there's been dereliction of duty with the Administration?