Separate Copies
Miss Marsden
Mr Haswell
Mr Stone
Ms Major
Mr Morris
FROM: A R Paul
Hong Kong Department
DATE
29 March 1990
неи
21112
RECEIVED IN REGISTR
19 JUL 1990
ISTRY
PA
on Taken
DESK OFFICER INDEX
HONG KONG: ANNUAL REPORT 1989
1. The production of the Annual Report is one of the more painful and tedious exercises which members of Hong Kong Department have to undertake As one who has now been involved in the production of 3 such reports, I have to say that this year's exercise has been by far the most painful and tedious of all.
2.
The original draft was sent to us from Hong Kong at the end of 1989. I had been assured that the draft had been thoroughly checked by all Heads of Section before it was passed to me. Yet it contained a number of major omissions and discrepancies. There was for example no section on the Basic Law and the section on Vietnamese Boat People was very thin indeed and had to be totally rewritten.
3. This necessitated a lot of last minute redrafting, using-up time which the Department could ill afford: as a result I had to work until 3 o'clock in the morning of 22/23 March in order to submit a presentable draft to Mr McLaren by the weekend. He then had to devote a substantial part of his weekend working on the draft.
I
4. Most of this could have been avoided if this exercise had been tackled properly at an earlier stage. This means taking the draft seriously and looking at it carefully to ensure that it is complete and accurate. must look to the Heads of Section to do this. I hope a similar fiasco can be avoided next year when at least some of us will have the dubious honour of preparing the 1990 Report.
ARPan
A R Paul
SAMADN
13
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