estimated thus the number of teachers at the various levels if the necessary parameters have been determined. Since the training of teachers and the saving of capital and recurrent finance are matters requiring long notice, not to mention the time required to permit of the build-up of the additional supporting primary and secondary education places, there is obvious merit in five and ten year projections of the kind mentioned above, even though those of five years and over can indicate no more than 'orders of magnitude' i.e. act as 'direction pointers'. This kind of long term or perspective planning must be accompanied by the more detailed and shorter term planning based on three year forecasts and broken down into occupations and professions. This national manpower planning should be supplemented by assessments of local needs carried out annually by the institutions themselves.
2.6. In the writer's view manpower development is a dynamic and continuing process and calls for the appointment of a full-time expert. In view of the difficulties being experienced in obtaining a short-term ILO expert it would appear reasonable for Government to send a suitably experienced Hong Kong graduate either to Britain or to America for training in this field, creating a Government post in an appropriate department (probably the Labour Department) for this purpose.
The Industrial Training Advisory Committee has already advised that it may be unable to provide an accurate assessment of manpower needs for industry in Hong Kong for want of a comprehensive manpower survey and has asked each of its constituent committees to estimate, as best they can, the training needs in their own group of industries. In the absence of specialist help this will be an unsatisfactory exercise at best as manpower assessment and planning is a skilled business.
2.7.
A number of efforts have been made to look ahead at the manpower requirements but the figures obtained vary so widely as to be quite useless even as indicators. Thus in its development plan, the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Hong Kong estimates a need for 1,000 graduate engineers per annum against an estimate of 1,500 per annum by the Federation of Hong Kong Industries and of 100 per annum by Government. Assuming that one quarter of Hong Kong's population of around 4,000,000 is gainfully employed, then the high level manpower need could be assessed as around 10,000 persons (1%). A considerable proportion of these already exists, although some will be expatriate rather than local personnel; moreover a proportion will achieve this level by promotion. On the other hand there will be wastage of one kind or another. Assuming that the resulting need is still around 8,000 it is unlikely from experience that more than half of this figure will need to be engineers and scientists, say 4,000, so that on this basis a conservative estimate of need would be more like 3-400 per annum, or nearer to Government's assessment of the situation. All this is speculative until reliable statistics of manpower, employment, wastage and the like, are available. There are clear indica- tions of the need to increase the training output in a number of industries, however, the major ones being construction, where the present total out-turn of students from technical education and training cannot cover the wastage at skilled level from the construction labour force, electronics where the present needs can only be met by increasing the training output by half as much again and commerce where there is a shortage of all kinds of accounting, clerical, secretarial and stenographic personnel.
2.8. The need for manpower data is vital if the forward planning of technical education and training is to be carried out in a meaningful way and if Government is to have a picture of the economy's needs on anything other than a hand-to-mouth basis. It is recommended that a suitable person should be trained overseas in either Britain or America, therefore, and on return be posted to an appropriate post in Government for this purpose. If and when the projected ILO specialist is appointed, this man would be his counterpart.
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