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difficulties due to insufficient or non-existent training

facilities locally. Courses at overseas institutions are

inevitably more expensive than courses provided by local

institutions not just because they are overseas, but also

because they often last much longer: a degree level

speech therapy course, for instance, takes four years to

complete.

23.

overseas

The remaining $15.7 million (66%) provided for

training in the Draft Estimates will be

will be used

mainly to finance programmes which are designed to

develop specialised knowledge and skills required to meet

the operational requirements of departments, and which

are simply not available in Hong Kong. Examples of these

courses are airport fire-fighting, bridge engineering,

various forms of specialist medical training and computer

crime investigation.

24.

As it is not possible to satisfy all the

training needs of the Civil Service through in-house

courses or programmes available at local institutions, we

shall have to continue to make use of training facilities

overseas. However, to end on a reassuring note, we have

now replaced overseas courses in concrete technology, gas

engineering and the forecasting of tropical cyclones and

severe rainstorm by locally commissioned programmes.