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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, at a media session at the lobby of the West Wing, Central Government Offices, Tamar, today (November 5):
Reporter: The families actually want you to make public the entire report as soon as possible. How can you actually satisfy them?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: At the end of the day we have to seek justice. The internal investigation may likely lead to civil service disciplinary proceedings. In order to respect the procedural requirement of civil service disciplinary proceedings, we will not disclose the full report at the end of the investigation. I think what the bereaved families would like to see is action. In other words, if we discover that any officer is involved in maladministration or any failure of duty, then of course such officers will have to be dealt with. I think this is the end result that people would like to see. Of course as the Secretary, I fully understand the anxiety of the bereaved families. I fully understand that the community would like to see the result of the investigation. As I said earlier, even though the report itself would not be published per se immediately, of course I will disclose the outcome of the internal investigation.
Reporter: You have been repeating yourself over and over again. You have mentioned, you've made points that you have made previouslyˇK Why can't the Government speed up the process?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: The process has been progressing very speedily. As I've said, we are talking about going back to all the records since the mid-1990s. We are talking about over 10 years, we are talking about 15 years or even 20 years of records. We are looking at all the procedural steps involved throughout the years in relation to the vessels in question. The internal investigation team has to talk to all those officers who are directly involved in the process as well as their supervisor. We are talking about a large number of people to be interviewed. We are also talking about huge volume of documents to be looked at.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Issued at HKT 12:42
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