TNAG-1733-FCO40-2446-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1988 — Page 195

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Supplementary to Question No. 2

Kegco meeting on 15 June 1988. an 15 June 1988.

DR. CHIU: Sir, is .the Government aware that it appears to

be very odd that road accident victims are covered by a

special scheme, whereas no similar coverage is provided

for train accident victims, bearing in mind that something

like over 1 million passengers use the MTR and KCR daily?

언

SE CRE TARY FOR HEALTH AND WELFARE: Sir, I agree that there

is some apparent contradictory nature about this problem

but I think the difficulty is that if we extended the

TAVAS scheme or something like it to the railway system,

which is basically on private property, there would really

be no logical reason why we should not also have similar

schemes for people compensated on other private property,

such as escalators in shopping centres and many other

areas and it would be very difficult to stop, short of a

full 'no fault' compensation scheme. As far as I am aware,

the only country that has

where it is part of the

system. Also, I

such a scheme is New Zealand

contributory social security

think we should take into account the

numbers of accidents involved.

In the financial year

1987-88, the number of traffic casualties reported to

to the

police was 21,790 and of these, 6,400 applied to the TAVAS

fund for assistance. The number of reported accidents on

railway systems during the year 1987 was 661 on

the MTR and 69 on the KCR, so the

scope of the problem

the

therefore is very different.

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