IN
RECH R.GISTRY No. $1
C NOV 1970
HIK 9/1
3
Thursday, October 1, 1970
06
SOCIAL POLICY
ITS HISTORY AND PROMISE
Governor Says Pattorn Of Interlocking Services Beginning To Emerge
The Legislative Council will soon be asked to approve free education
in all government and aided primary schools after the coming Lunar New
Year and the Government is examining the possibility of powers to ensure
that parents who could have their children educated do so.
The Governor said a flexible system along these lines should go far
towards meeting the main needs of the poorest families in a practical way -
since lack of education leading to low family income, leading in turn to
children kept from school, constituted a circular problem that had to be broken.
He made these points in a detailed analysis of the Government's social
policy, devoting to it the major portion of his annual review of Hong Kong
affairs, and tracing its historical beginnings to the time when the Colony's
true community was very small.
He said "a new pattern of interlocking social services" was beginning
to emerge
17 years since the date in 1953 when a previously highly mobile
population, coming here to make a living and returning to their homes in
due course, not only began to swell in numbers but also to become more static.
The overriding problem of recent years was the provisioning of
basic housing, schools, hospitals for a suddenly expanding population of
hundreds of thousands of new entrants and their families, and in the absence
of time to allow for the long, slow build-up of social institutions that other
countries enjoyed.
/Hong Kong
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