XN000022-1996-03-06 — Page 4

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Question: (on spending on social services)

Governor: No. We've taken the decisions that were required in order to continue to develop our welfare provision in Hong Kong and our education provision and other forms of services. Of course as you know during the last year we've told the Chinese side how in Hong Kong the budget is created. We've walked them through the whole budget process in a very sensible way so they know how we manage things here in Hong Kong. But the decisions, the decisions that we've taken, they are in the interest of people in Hong Kong. We've made substantial increases in priority programmes, for example in programmes for the needy, the disabled, the elderly, where spending has gone up by nearly 15 per cent in real terms. But we can afford to do that because we are a successful community. We are still only spending about 18 per cent of our GDP through the public sector. We're spending twice as much as a proportion of public spending on education as we spend on welfare. It is a very successful mix, and it is a mix which is so successful that we must remember compassionately the needs of those who haven't done as well as the rest of us in life. Thank you very much.

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Government to tackle discrimination step-by-step

The Hong Kong Government has taken a step-by-step approach to study individual areas of possible discrimination, Principal Crown Counsel, Mr Stephen Wong, said at a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva yesterday (Tuesday).

The Government would initiate to study the question of racial discrimination later this year with a view to establishing to what extent problems existed that were not adequately catered for by the existing legislation or by other measures, he said.

Mr Wong, leader of the Hong Kong Government team attending the meeting as part of the British delegation, was responding to observations regarding the Bill of Rights Ordinance made by the Committee's Country Rapporteur, Professor Theo Van Boven.

The Committee has been examining the territory's 13th periodic report under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) during a one-and-a-half day meeting starting Monday (March 4).