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housing for an additional 1.8 million people. The broad objective is to provide by 1984 acceptable self-contained accommodation for every family in Hong Kong. This is a massive programme by any
standards.
Health
Medical and Health
5. As for the health and medical programme, the main proposal (in the 1974 White Paper) is a target of 5.5 hospital beds per thousand population by 1983 (at present there are 4.1 beds per thousand population). This compares with about 9 per thousand in
the United Kingdom.
Social Welfare
should
6. Expenditure on social welfare will increase by about 80 per cent between 1974 and 1978. This will be through a continued and expanded public assistance scheme; disability and infirmity allowances; and emergency relief.
On Education
7. The hon Gentleman also mentioned and referred to the new ten-year programme announced in October 1974. The main objective is to provide by 1979, nine years' subsidised education for every child up to the age of 14. In the senior secondary classes, the aim is to provide places for 40 per cent of the 15-16 year age group by 1979. This programme will remove one of the main criticisms of the educational system in Hong Kong, that children who have completed their primary schooling at the age of 12 have been left in limbo because there were no secondary school places for them and because they could not legally start work in industrial undertakings until the age of 14.
Labour
8.
Recently there has been interest on both sides of the House in/t8kartions. Determined efforts have been and are now being made to raise general labour standards by improvements in workmen's
/compensation
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