Transcript of remarks by CE at media session before ExCo meeting (with video)
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Reporter: Mrs Lam, although you said the decision is made by the electoral officer, but many people think the officer is pressured by the Secretary for Justice, which is in turn pressured by you or Beijing. How would you respond to that? And on the Hospital Authority, despite the additional funding, there are some systemic problems, like there are not enough hospital beds. How can the Authority tackle these problems?
Chief Executive: Well, on the first question, there is absolutely no ground for that sort of accusation or allegation of pressure. The Returning Officers in Hong Kong are acting in accordance with the law to determine the eligibility of each case based on provisions in the law, as well as the evidence put in front of the Returning Officer. Of course, in the course of discharging his or her statutory duty, the Returning Officer may need to approach the Department of Justice for some legal advice, and that is how the actual situation works.
As far as the situation of the Hospital Authority, I have to say that I understand and recognise that while on the one hand we have a very sound, very reliable public hospital system, which we are all very proud of, but you are right, at the same time the Hospital Authority, being such a huge organisation now, does have some systemic issues that we need to tackle. I have every determination to tackle those systemic issues together with the Secretary for Food and Health. But in the short term, we need to address the heavy workload at some of the public hospitals, so I have just announced that in order to provide the Hospital Authority management with every assurance in terms of resource support to implement short-term or immediate measures to relieve the workload, I will allocate an additional $500 million to the Hospital Authority so that they could speedily put in place some of the additional measures.
In addition, I want to have a measure introduced which will help to boost staff morale and also better retain staff in the Hospital Authority, and that is to remove a practice which has been put in place for the last 15 years that any new recruit into the Hospital Authority, or any such new recruit upon promotion, they would not have a salary increment, or what we call a pay point increment, in the first two years. I feel that removing this particular practice will be, in my view, a sort of recognition to the very dedicated staff that we now have in the Hospital Authority. But in the longer term, there are many issues that we need to tackle and which I believe the Secretary for Food and Health would put in extra efforts and priority to look at those issues.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Issued at HKT 12:29
Issued at HKT 12:29
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Audio / Video
CE meets the media