TNAG-1855-FCO40-2630-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-memoranda-and-minutes-of-me-1989 — Page 16

HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL — 22 February 1989

香港立法局 ————————一九八九年二月二十二日

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SECRETARY FOR LANDS AND WORKS: Sir, an internal study has been going on, particularly since the last incident, and that is aimed, of course, at

producing a code of practice which I referred to in my answer. In due course the code of practice itself will be published, but there was no intention of doing a special publication of the study.

梁煒彤議員問:主席先生,為何自前次發生電閘夾死小童事件以來,政府一直没有採取任何措施 以防止日後再次發生此類意外?為何要到再次發生此類事件,才匆匆研究對策?

SECRETARY FOR LANDS AND WORKS: It is probable that after the first case action could have been taken. But in fact people are inventing new devices and bringing in new things which to a certain extent threaten our safety all the time. I do not think the Government is likely to be able to keep up with all of them.

林貝聿嘉議員問:主席先生,政府可否告知本局,在有關管制的手冊或法例發出前,會否禁止出 售這些電閘?

SECRETARY FOR LANDS AND WORKS: Sir, I would not really hazard a guess on the market. In many cases, these gates are perfectly all right, and the devices for closing them and making them safe are optional devices which are sold, and can be sold, separately. So I do not think we would be bringing in any prohibition, if I understood the question rightly on the sale of gates. It would take quite an effort of legislation to do so. But we will probably get to the code of practice first. The reason why we are going for a code of practice is that we can produce a code which will be useful whether or not we will bring in legislation.

DR. LEONG: Sir, we have just heard that there was another incident of child injury by an electric sliding gate. Will the Administration inform this Council whether prophylactic measures are or will be taken to better protect our younger generation from preventable accidents and injuries in general, as statistics prepared by the Hong Kong Government's working party on preventive medical education training has shown conclusively that the most common cause of death in children and young adults in Hong Kong was injury and poisoning, especially accidents?