TNAG-0568-FCO40-701-Planning-paper-on-Hong-Kong-1976 — Page 213

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a ten-year housing plan is designed to provide additional housing for another 1.8 million people;

a five-year plan for the development of social welfare services eg a means-tested public assistance scheme non-contributory allowances to "vulnerable groups" and emergency relief;

a five-year education plan to provide secondary education up to the age of 14 for all children in Hong Kong and five years secondary schooling up to 16 for 40% of the children;

a plan to expand medical and health services by building four new hospitals

and to provide greater training facilities

for staff.

It

27. However, Hong Kong's critics argue that it still does not go nearly far enough and that a number of the Colony's other social problems are related to

insufficient Government effort in these fields.

has been asserted that the major crime problem in Hong Kong (which the Governor has recently described as Hong Kong's major social problem) and also the very high rate of drug addiction in the Colony can be attributed to some extent to the very bad conditions under which many families live. The much-publicised problem of child labour in Hong Kong, now being energetically tackled by the Government, has been ascribed to inadequate social security. (This may well be a contributory factor but the major consideration is that compulsory schooling ends at 12 while the legal minimum age in industry is 14.)

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Further social progress in Hong Kong will depend on growing public support and enthusiasm for the necessary legislation and higher and more widely-based taxation. The normal method for mobilising this

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