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The following is the statement given by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mrs Anson Chan, at the ground floor lobby of CGO West Wing this (Wednesday) afternoon:

Mrs Chan: This afternoon, as you know, the Select Committee of the Legislative Council tabled their Report on their investigation into what went wrong on the opening of the new airport. I know that the members of the Select Committee have devoted considerable efforts and put in a great deal of hard work into this investigation and I would like them to know that we, in the Government, appreciate their efforts. To do justice to this Report, I would obviously consider very carefully the findings and conclusions of the investigation and have particular regard to the evidence adduced for reaching those conclusions. Perhaps you would allow me to make one or two preliminary comments.

First of all, I hope that in reading this report, members of the media and members of the public will bear in mind that ADSCOM (Airport Development Steering Committee )is not a super Airport Authority board. As Justice Woo has pointed out in his Report, the statutory responsibilities for the planning, implementation and operation of the airport have been entrusted by statue to the Airport Authority and ADSCOM cannot and should not take over the responsibilities of the senior management of the Airport Authority.

Secondly, ADSCOM is a body that was established to perform the role of an overall co-ordinator and an overall monitor of the ten projects included in the Airport Core Programme. In all our deliberations, particularly in reaching a decision on airport opening day, we had collectively discussed the issues involved in ADSCOM and reached a consensus. So in this respect, I am somewhat puzzled by the statement in the LegCo Select Committee Report that I should take on a special personal responsibility for AOD (airport opening day).

I have said recently that in respect of the responsibilities of NAPCO, to the extent that, perhaps, it did not perform the overall monitoring role as well as should have been expected, and in respect of the responsibilities of ADSCOM, for seeing that NAPCO performs its responsibilities, of course to the extent that I am Chairman of ADSCOM, I am willing and do accept responsibility for this.

I also wish to stress that we realise, of course, that we paid a very heavy price for what went wrong on airport opening. I realise that we have caused a great deal of inconvenience to the public, and in fact, financial loss to some of those involved. And for this, personally I regret it very very much. We have a number of lessons to learn from this, and as I have said earlier, we will follow up on these lessons learnt and in ADSCOM, particularly, we will be drawing up a set of guidelines to make sure that in future when we handle large infrastructural projects, we will avoid the same pitfalls. Thank you.

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Note: Please also refer to the Chinese statement by Mrs Chan.

End/Wednesday, January 27, 1999

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