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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Is it surprising that one student recently wrote in an essay that Hong Kong built a cross-harbour tunnel last year?
Dare I even mention the promises made last year for a better deal for workers, and for bringing the Government and people closer together?
How much talk there has been—and how little action! What have we really got, among the things I have just mentioned, that we did not have five years ago? Precious little! And what are we likely to have in the next five years that we do not have now? What do we have to show for all the reports, plans, booklets, blueprints and surveys, what we do have is a large expense sheet, a whole waste of time, and an awful lot of bitter disappointment.
I wonder if the Government has realized that the public is sick of talk, and that people here are eager to know really what the future of Hong Kong for the next thirty years is going to be.
I should like to refer to some specific aspects where planning is urgently needed, and I should like to ask for speedy action.
Education
The Government White Paper on Education, 1965, stated as one of its aims that all children would have the chance of subsidized education by 1970-1. Half the allotted time has already passed, and we are little further forward towards the ultimate goal.
There seems to be no valid reason why universal, subsidized primary education should not be achieved by 1970, but at the present speed another ten years will be all too short to achieve it.
About 40% of all primary children are still attending private, non-subsidized schools, not including at least another 100,000 children who are not receiving education at all.
Even if the goal can be achieved in providing sufficient school buildings, what crash programme has been prepared for training the necessary teachers? About 40% of primary school teachers are untrained and would therefore not be allowed to teach in subsidized schools.
Not only are school buildings and teacher-training urgently required if the plan is to materialize, but we also need to know what kind of education will be provided. What plans are being made to adjust our post-primary education to the needs of our industrial community? Are we planning to man our industries with better skills and techniques? Do we know how many doctors, lawyers, nurses, and other professional and white-collar workers a community like ours will need in the years that lie ahead, and are we planning for something like that number? Or are we continuing the old way, hit or miss, resulting in armies of unskilled workers turning to hawking, and tens of thousands of secondary schools leavers looking for the kind of jobs they will never find?
I am not going to pretend that planning for education is easy. It is a problem all over the world. But we cannot for that reason sit back and excuse ourselves. If we do, there are many who will never excuse us and they are the young people who make up half of our population. The mistakes of other countries should rouse us to action, not encourage us to complacency.
Social Welfare
I wonder how many surveys and reports have been produced about Social Welfare? It always seems that those in charge of this work are so far removed from the problem that they have to bring here experts from other countries who are even further away from understanding the needs of the Colony, and who have to spend money making investigations into circumstances that any Hong Kong child knows.
Moreover, we train social welfare workers in United Kingdom theory that has little or no relation to the situation in Hong Kong. While these workers are set to concentrate their energies on decorating the Colony with a few pet schemes to show off to visitors, the voluntary agencies are hard-pressed to do the massive, essential social welfare work of the Colony. I have noticed that the G.I.S. men are always on the job for some sensational hand-outs televised to prove the alertness of the department. But I wonder how many Councillors like myself have found that when it comes to the day-to-day work of assisting desperate men and women, the department drags its feet and requires constant reminders to get on with the job.
This slowness of the Social Welfare Department, which I have been hammering for years, needs investigation. Is it due to shortage of staff? Is it frustration of the workers by the paucity of the assistance available? Or could it be due to lethargy at the top, and the constant changing of personnel?
Does the Government consider social welfare work so unimportant that it allocates so little money to the work? Does the Government consider social welfare work so unimportant that there is no need for continuity in the headship of the department? With three different directors so far this year, what kind of overall planning can we expect? What confidence can we have in a department that acted so inanely in the case of the blind factory workers? What is the new plan that has been promised? What of all the talk in the past about even a limited
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Page 160 of 243
296
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Is it surprising that one student recently wrote in an essay that Hong Kong built a cross-harbour tunnel last year?
Dare I even mention the promises made last year for a better deal for workers, and for bringing the Government and people closer together?
How much talk there has been-and how little action! What have we really got, among the things I have just mentioned, that we did not have five years ago? Precious little! And what are we likely to have in the next five years that we do not have now? What do we have to show for all the reports, plans, booklets, blueprints and surveys, what we do have is a large expense sheet, a whole waste of time, and an awful lot of bitter disappointment.
I wonder if the Government has realized that the public is sick of talk, and that people here are eager to know really what the future of Hong Kong for the next thirty years is going to be.
I should like to refer to some specific aspects where planning is urgently needed, and I should like to ask for speedy action.
Education
The Government White Paper on Education, 1965, stated as one of its aims that all children would have the chance of subsidized educa- tion by 1970-1. Half the allotted time has already passed, and we are little further forward towards the ultimate goal.
There seems to be no valid reason why universal, subsidized primary education should not be achieved by 1970, but at the present speed another ten years will be all too short to achieve it.
About 40% of all primary children are still attending private, non- subsidized schools, not including at least another 100,000 children who are not receiving education at all.
Even if the goal can be achieved in providing sufficient school buildings, what crash programme has been prepared for training the necessary teachers? About 40% of primary school teachers are untrain- ed and would therefore not be allowed to teach in subsidized schools.
Not only are school buildings and teacher-training urgently required if the plan is to materialize, but we also need to know what kind of education will be provided. What plans are being made to adjust our post-primary education to the needs of our industrial community? Are we planning to man our industries with better skills and techniques? Do we know how many doctors, lawyers, nurses, and other professional and white-collar workers a community like ours will need in the years
і
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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that lie ahead, and are we planning for something like that number? Or are we continuing the old way, hit or miss, resulting in armies of unskilled workers turning to hawking, and tens of thousands of secondary schools leavers looking for the kind of jobs they will never find?
I am not going to pretend that planning for education is easy. It is a problem all over the world. But we cannot for that reason sit back and excuse ourselves. If we do, there are many who will never excuse us and they are the young people who make up half of our population. The mistakes of other countries should rouse us to action, not encourage us to complacency.
Social Welfare
I wonder how many surveys and reports have been produced about Social Welfare? It always seems that those in charge of this work are so far removed from the problem that they have to bring here experts from other countries who are even further away from under- standing the needs of the Colony, and who have to spend money making investigations into circumstances that any Hong Kong child knows.
Moreover, we train social welfare workers in United Kingdom theory that has little or no relation to the situation in Hong Kong. While these workers are set to concentrate their energies on decorating the Colony with a few pet schemes to show off to visitors, the voluntary agencies are hard-pressed to do the massive, essential social welfare work of the Colony. I have noticed that the G.I.S. men are always on the job for some sensational hand-outs televised to prove the alertness of the department. But I wonder how many Councillors like myself have found that when it comes to the day-to-day work of assisting desperate men and women, the department drags its feet and requires constant reminders to get on with the job.
This slowness of the Social Welfare Department, which I have been hammering for years, needs investigation. Is it due to shortage of staff? Is it frustration of the workers by the paucity of the assistance available? Or could it be due to lethargy at the top, and the constant changing of personnel?
Does the Government consider social welfare work so unimportant that it allocates so little money to the work? Does the Government consider social welfare work so unimportant that there is no need for continuity in the headship of the department? With three different directors so far this year, what kind of overall planning can we expect? What confidence can we have in a department that acted so inanely in the case of the blind factory workers? What is the new plan that has been promised? What of all the talk in the past about even a limited
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