CONFIDENTIAL
3
(c) there will be free primary education, heavily subsidised or free secondary education up to the age of 15, and a wide choice of higher secondary, technical and tertiary education at highly subsidised rates with arrange- ments to ensure that no one is denied through lack of means;
(d) medical and health services already good by Asian standards, available at nominal charges or free, will be further and substantially improved; a second medical school and a new dental school will have opened;
(e) there will have been a large increase in recreational facilities and a strong organisation created to preserve and exploit the large unspoilt areas of the Colony for recreation and tourism;
(f) the contact between Government and people, and the cohesion of the community, will have been strengthened by the completion of a system of Mutual Aid Committees covering the population in built-up areas.
6. In the same time-span, three new self-contained towns of between 200,000 and 800,000 each will have been constructed in the New Territories so as to spread out the population and provide room for an improved environment and better development of new and more sophisticated industries. To make this possible, an ambitious expansion of road and rail links is under construction or planned.
7. These things are not mere gleams in a planner's eye. They represent the rounding off of a long process of social administration which has gradually lifted Hong Kong from the misery of the '50s to its present situation, and which should achieve normalcy by the early '80s. With prudent husbandry of the Colony's resources, and external catastrophe in world trade excepted, I am satisfied the finance for these considerable developments can be found.
8. This year of renewed prosperity and confidence, and of recapitulation and rethinking of Government policies and programmes, included some develop- ments of importance:
(a) membership of the Legislative Council was substantially expanded to pro- vide articulate voices to speak for the workers and under-privileged-a role hitherto largely (though not exclusively) played by official members. As a leader writer put it after a particularly lively debate in which the liberals had the best of it: "the industrial lobby, which has held sway for many years is going to have increased difficulty in pressing its view not only in the Government but in the Council. A strong liberal element can be counted on to provide a cogently argued case for reasonable reform both in labour legislation and welfare programmes. (b) With the agreement of Her Majesty's Government, the Hong Kong Government announced that in labour and social legislation its goal was broad comparability with neighbouring Asian countries within five years, and legislation was immediately announced to close the most glaring gap-disparity in the amount of paid holidays to which workers were entitled. My own impression is that within the next few years Hong Kong's provision for workers will not only be broadly equal, but in practice considerably superior, to that of her neighbours.
(c) After years of backbreaking and often frustrating disappointments in our efforts to curb crime and corruption, in 1975 a precarious plateau was reached; in 1976 at last violent crime and corruption noticeably began to decline. We are making no claim of victory, and the unremitting efforts to organise the population, police and public service to eradicate these endemic diseases will continue remorselessly, but I think that
CONFIDENTIAL
175560 31
A 2
Page 15Page 16
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.