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The package of initiatives proposed in the Chief Executive's 2000 Policy Address to alleviate poverty, improve the overall economic environment, upgrade education and enhance training and retraining have received support from the public, according to a telephone opinion survey commissioned by the Home Affairs Bureau on October 23-25, 2000.

Overall speaking, 60.9 per cent of the respondents supported the measures and proposals in the 2000 Policy Address while 15.3 per cent did not. On the whole, 66.4 per cent of the respondents found the 2000 Policy Address acceptable while 16.4 per cent considered otherwise.

According to the findings of the survey, results of which were released today (Monday), 87.4 per cent of the respondents supported the provision of more employment opportunities with the creation of 15,000 new jobs; while 78.5 per cent supported the proposal to provide training for people with relatively low educational qualifications and explore with the Employment Retraining Board the possibility of setting up a loan fund to help trainees start their own business.

On the education front, nearly 90 per cent of the respondents supported the initiative to relax the requirements for the Kindergarten Fee Remission Scheme and about 80 per cent favoured injecting $10 billion into the School Improvement Programme to upgrade the teaching and learning environment.

In addition, some 76 per cent of the respondents backed the proposal to increase training opportunities for school principals and teachers; and over 73 per cent supported increasing the percentage of senior secondary school graduates who would receive tertiary education in Hong Kong from 30 per cent to 60 per cent within a decade.

On environmental improvement, 83.3 per cent backed the measures to improve air quality such as replacing diesel-powered taxis with LPG-powered taxis.

The Chief Executive's undertaking to enhance the accountability of senior government officials and improve the executive-legislature relationship won the support of 78 per cent and 85.5 per cent of the respondents respectively.

The survey was conducted by the Telephone Survey Research Laboratory of Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It was carried out through telephone interviews in the evenings on October 23-25, 2000. A total of 1,006 respondents aged 18 and above were successfully interviewed. They were randomly selected from the residential telephone directories.

End/Monday, October 30, 2000

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