TNAG-1609-FCO40-22131-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1987 — Page 105

unilaterally or even bilaterally are misguided.

Hong Kong

will continue to devote energy and ingenuity to addressing

these problems multilaterally,

is

through the GATT.

There

a reasonable chance that the new round of multilateral

trade

can negotiations

real achieve

and much

needed

While clearly

improvements to the world trading system.

the final results

depend on a wide range of participants

compromising on

we their differences,

intend to see that

this chance is not missed through lack of effort.

Labour shortage

13.

Finally, the labour

the labour shortage issue.

There seems

to be general agreement that

we

we should do what

can

in

the

terms of practical measures

join

to

encourage

more

people

to

labour

force.

But

there

is

considerable

disagreement when it comes to the idea that we should relax our policy on importation of labour, and Members' speeches

reflect that fundamental disagreement.

14.

This issue

was well aired in this

Council only

so I will be brief. We continue to see serious

to permit the

a month ago,

problems in relaxing our immigration rules large-scale importation of labour. These problems relate

sector

particularly

labour to

relations, to

the labour

getting its

full share

of the

as economic boom,

Mr. Tam

Yiu-chung put it, to

the effect on

housing

and social

/services

}

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