XN000022-1996-10-04 — Page 13

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And can I add one point, which I think is an indication of the responsibility and decency of this community. I know people feel strongly about the issue but with the exception of two incidents, which I think have been widely deplored by the media in Hong Kong and by the community as a whole, I think people have distinguished between their views on this dispute and their views on the contribution which the Japanese community makes to Hong Kong and which individual Japanese tourists and business people and so on make in Hong Kong. I don't think anybody in Hong Kong has an argument with individual Japanese members of our community or individual Japanese visitors. And I was pleased that there were some people handing out leaflets to Japanese tourists at the airport and making that point very explicitly. This is a decent and open society and we want it to stay that way.

Question (in Chinese): Mr Governor, thank you. I came from a THA. In the 1993 Policy Address you announced that by the end of 1996, there would be the completion of clearance of pre-1984 THA. I would like to thank you for that. So far there are four left to be dealt with.

So I have two questions. Firstly, Mr Governor, are you aware that there are still four THA's pending clearance? Do you know how many eligible tenants are living there?

And secondly, Mr Governor, I'd like to know whether you have directed your staff that in order to live up to your pledge something be done? Now the Housing Department has not yet made property settlement for these people and before they did that they actually terminated the tenancy unilaterally. They instructed the residents and tenants to live on their own or they would mobilise the police to evict them. I'm talking about residents from these four THA's, so that they could like up to the pledge you've made.

I've got with me letter issued to THA tenants, issued by your subordinates of the Housing Department. Now this is the termination of tenancy notice and threatening letters that I've received. So Mr Governor, I hope you would be made aware of this problem.

Governor: Right. Can I answer the question about THA's. I made two commitments in 1992 and 1993, on temporary housing areas and I would like to have gone further. The two commitments I made was that first of all we would give everyone in 1993, who was living in a temporary housing area an offer of accommodation elsewhere in permanent housing before 1997, and secondly we said that we would get rid of, demolish, all the older temporary housing areas, the ones built before 1984, by 1996/97. On the first point, making people at least one offer of re-housing, we've offered I think about 85 per cent of the 61/62,000 people who were in temporary housing areas at that time, we've made about 85 per cent an offer of re-housing and we will hope to complete the job by the end of 1997. We can't, of course, force people to take the offers that are made, but equally we can't make an indefinite number of offers. I've been to one or two THA's where sometimes people have turned down five, six, seven, eight offers of re-housing and that does make it more difficult to clear the THA as rapidly as we would like.