Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1966-1967 — Page 7

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

SOMETHING like half of the population of Hong Kong is under the age of 21 years, and it is hardly surprising, therefore, that of the many problems to attract public notice during the year the problems of young people were particularly prominent. Despite much that is being done by many voluntary agencies and also by Government departments to provide facilities for young people there is generally acknowledged to be a great and growing need to identify the needs of young people and seek to meet them if all the energy and latent power that they possess is to be released into the community in constructive ways that will create and sustain bright hopes for a dynamic and stable society in Hong Kong for the future. April 1966 regrettably saw, for the first time in ten years, an outburst of rioting which was both physically and morally destructive and in which young people played a prominent part. In the aftermath of these unfortunate happenings voices have been raised for improved programmes calculated to engage the energies of those who are aimlessly or inadequately occupied and to secure for them better prospects of stable employment through improved educational and training schemes. Some of these matters are very much the concern of this Department and of the voluntary agencies working in association with it and they continue to pose a challenge to which answers have yet to be found. For they call for resources that often cannot be quickly developed, resources too which are in demand for other services for which claims are also being increasingly loudly voiced-for example for the physically handicapped, the mentally subnormal, the delinquent, unmarried mothers and their children and the socially handicapped. In all these fields there are recognized needs still to be met. There is a growing body of opinion, too, which believes that the time has come for Government to develop schemes to promote social security for the population, by lessening the burden of aged, the widow, the bereaved and those suffering illness or other disability.

2. With all these claims upon our attention it might perhaps be said that the frustrations of young people which underlay last April's violence are almost matched by the frustrations felt by those who,

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