TNAG-1734-FCO40-2447-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1988 — Page 338

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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL - 11 May 1988

independence and a spirit of self determination to prevent social conditioning. To mould young people into a standard shade like what South Korea, Singapore and Mainland China do, is not in line with Hong Kong's free and open society and I hope that senior government officials will be sitting on the commission to formulate policy, and also priorities should be set for easy implementation.

With these remarks, Sir, I support the motion.

MR. LIU (in Cantonese): Sir, the young people of today will become our successors tomorrow. Therefore, any government that has an eye on the future will attach a great deal of importance to the development and the growth of young people. In May 1986, the Government set up the Central Committee on Youth to conduct a review with an objective of ascertaining whether we will need a youth policy in Hong Kong. This has shown the sincerity and farsighted- ness of the Government.

Within a short span of 18 months, the Central Committee on Youth has completed two surveys on our young people, and has also made comparisons and analysis of the youth policies in 10 different countries. The exhaustiveness of the committee is indeed admirable.

In the past, Hong Kong did not have a youth policy, but all along, we have been paying much attention to the growth and development of our young people. We have devoted much financial resources for our young people in areas such as education, employment, recreation and social welfare so that they can have a all-rounded growth.

The growth of our young people involves a wide scope of problems. In fact, a lot of government departments, in varying degrees, are already doing things which are closely related to a young people's policy, and a lot of voluntary agencies have already made our young people their servicing target. The problem now is to co-ordinate our existing work and resources and to seek for further development so that our young people will have a more comprehensive development and so that we will not waste our resources.

The commission on youth as recommended by the committee, will, I am sure, be able to take up the co-operating role to a certain degree, but since the commission's role will only be advisory, it will not have any executive power. In fact, the committee has suggested that in order not to avoid overlapping of work at the district level, there is no need to have district youth committees. This is, of course, a wise decision because the committee understands that the existing central and district systems are already very complicated. However, if we do not clearly outline the channel of executive recommendations, I am afraid that we will have to fall back on the existing system and in the end, all the district committees will have to take up the job of implementing the recommendations of the commission, and they may find this an added burden to their original work.