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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

adherence to the policy and management decisions of the appropriate Select Committees of this Council that the staff of the Resettlement Department, as the executive arm of this Council, has been administer-ing the resettlement estates. Ironically, it is also through this very Council, though in a different guise, that the Housing Authority and Government Low Cost Housing estates have been administered. If there has been any difference in the result of their labours, we, as members of the Urban Council, might well ask ourselves why it has been so.

Have we taken one attitude in one and a different attitude in another when questions of principle and practice were submitted to the appropriate committees for decisions?

I have mentioned past achievements, and let us by all means look back with pride at what we have done; but more important, let us look forward with humility at the tasks of the future. I am sure we must make up our minds that ready-made solutions, whether based on our own experience in the past here, or upon doctrine worked out elsewhere in far different circumstances, are not likely to provide all the answers to our problems. If there is a quality which distinguishes Hong Kong, I think it is the ability to look each problem squarely in the face, to distrust easy comparisons, to face and recognize new circumstances, to bring a freshness of thought to bear upon each new challenge, and to draw upon the best which experience elsewhere has to offer, without being afraid to break new ground and mix the old with the new when, as so often happens in Hong Kong, we are up against something which has never happened before in quite the same way. Certainly we need this quality now as much as we have ever needed it. (Applause).

MR. A. de O. SALES: Mr. Chairman, on a point of clarification, Page 334, the Commissioner used the term "resettlement units". Would he please define this term for my guidance.

COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT: The unit is a design of P.W.D., Sir.

MR. SALES: I was asking whether you meant a physical unit or people to be resettled there. If it is 400,000 resettlement units in six years, and if that term does not connote people, then it would mean nearly 2,000,000 people in six years. Am I right, or, as I am sure, am I wrong?

COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT: The units are designed according to the

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC WORKS: Mr. Chairman, MR. SALES is wrong.

MR. SALES: Yes, that is what I wanted to know. 400,000 resettlement units and not 400,000 people resettled in six years. Thank you.

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DIRECTOR OF SOCIAL WELFARE: Sir, I should like to deal with one or two points raised by members relating to social welfare matters, the more particularly with those relating to the operation of the extended Public Assistance Scheme, the position regarding the old and needy, the provisions for special education for handicapped children, and the provisions for the training and employment of physically and mentally handicapped adults.

Several members have referred to the time taken to introduce a revised Public Assistance Scheme. I should like to point out that approval in principle for this Scheme (subject to the provision of the necessary funds) was given in March this year, and I said then in Legislative Council that it would take 9 months to a year to introduce the revised Scheme. Financial approval for the provision of posts and other necessary expenditure involved was given in August this year, and I said again in Legislative Council that it was hoped to maintain the time-table referred to. Since then, steps have been taken to recruit and train the necessary staff, and to introduce all the various procedures involved. Measures on the scale involved simply cannot be introduced overnight. It is at present the aim to convert all existing clients to payment on a cash basis under the new Scheme, albeit under the existing criteria, at the end of this calendar year, and to be able to introduce the new criteria for payment by the end of the present financial year. This is in accordance with the original forecast. I do not honestly think that any faster progress could have been made in the implementation required.

Mr. Hu has raised the question of the relationship between the measures under public assistance and assistance towards primary education, which was referred to during the October debate in the Legislative Council, and regrets that this relationship has not been made clear. But it has been made clear more than once in various speeches and press releases, one of which coincidentally was issued on the morning of the day that he himself made his speech. Quite simply, it is a facet of the Scheme that, in considering cash assistance to needy families so as to enable them to maintain a minimum income level, educational expenses are disregarded so that no family need feel that it cannot afford to educate its children. This is indeed a facet of the present Scheme, but of course under the revised Scheme the benefits will be considerably higher.

Mr. BLAKER has suggested that the estimated cost of $20,000,000 a year for the Public Assistance Scheme could now be raised to $25,000,000. This seems to betray a complete misunderstanding of the Scheme itself, for it is of course based on the application of criteria and not on a specific limited financial commitment. This implies in fact an open-ended financial commitment, and if the application of the

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