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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, at a media session after attending a radio programme in the morning today (January 16):
Reporter: What do you think about the class boycott that University of Hong Kong students are planning to stage and also do you think it is not within the EDB(Education Bureau)'s capacity to further reach out to them to communicate more? And also I have some questions for the "One Belt, One Road" initiative. So the Government is planning to inject $1 billion into the initiative but then the officials clarified it would be just the annual investment return from it that would be injected to fund the overseas students. So do you have any estimate of that number, like how much will actually be going to the students. And also people tend to think that it makes more sense to actually directly fund the local students instead of the exchange students because it seems to have a more guaranteed result locally. What do you think of that?
Secretary for Education: As far as the University of Hong Kong Students' Union's statement, our position would be it is free for everyone in Hong Kong to freely express oneself in a free, legal and harmonious manner, to do that. We respect all this. And there are many channels for students to voice out the issues and work with the President, with the management of the University as well as with the University Council. These are all in existence. I do have concerns that students have got to take care of themselves in terms of health due to the recent temperature and weather, at the same time their learning and study schedule. I hope these will not be affected. And these I suppose would be the key concerns of the students. And I do highly recommend and reinforce that students be working together with the management, with the President and with the University Council. I understand various members are very open in contacting and communicating (with students). So that is the part of the Students' Union.
As far as the "One Belt, One Road" scholarship, let me reiterate a few points. First one is every year we invest over $19.5 billion in the area of higher education. Every year we are funding the various aspects of students, particularly for international exposure and exchange and so on, we spend over $170 million alone in some of the scholarships in funding students to go overseas for various exchange programmes. We do invest quite a big amount. This year alone, for the unit cost for university education, it is over $269,000. It is around 18.9 per cent increase over last year・s unit cost subsidy for university education. As an example, now over 119 000 students will be able to get into degree programmes. It is a major investment. Today we have 46 per cent of Form 6 graduates who will be able to get a first degree study programme. That is an example of various investments for our students. We do recognise that in order to ride on the spirit and advocacy of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative from China, from the Mainland, as well as from the country, as well as the opportunity that will be incurred for Hong Kong's future, particularly for young people's future. For that reason, we have expanded, let me repeat that, expanded our current programme. Today in the Government's scholarship schemes we do house around 10 scholarships for ASEAN countries and Korea and so on, so that students from those countries upon recommendation from universities could get our scholarships when they are studying in Hong Kong. And we believe that with the shift of economic, social and cultural activities to Asia, we should be able to ride on that opportunity, expanding that, too. For that reason, we did two things. One, last year as a starting point we have sent 92 outstanding students to study overseas in the prominent, most successful universities around the world. And it cost a lot of money, each one the maximum funding could be reaching $450,000 per year. That would be our activities in footing the bill for our students going overseas. At the same time, we believe that we should be able to encourage more overseas performing students coming to Hong Kong as well so that they understand the strength and the future of Hong Kong and be able to contribute further to that during and after their study in Hong Kong. That is the whole intent. That is why the policy suggested that we should be providing and expanding the current scholarship scheme to have the category on "One Belt One Road" scholarship and then will increase the number from today・s 10 scholarships over time to another 100 of those. To start off, we have already announced the 10 ones for the Indonesians as a starter. If you look at the $1 billion, it is the seed fund only. Every year・s return would be deployed for the programme I just mentioned. In this particular case for the first year alone, the 10 scholarships from Indonesia would mean an annual spending of around $1.2 million, and that would not be the only money from the Hong Kong Government. In order to support that particular initiative, the Chinese Manufacturers・ Association of Hong Kong has already promised to fund another $50,000 per student per year in order to subsidise the living expenses as well. You can see that it is a joint effort between the Government and the private sector. The idea is to have those students coming to Hong Kong, understand Hong Kong, and so that they may consider to stay in Hong Kong after their study. Or even when they go home and back to their own countries, they will be able to keep and enhance the link and network with Hong Kong so that they will be able to expand our students・ opportunities for the future.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Saturday, January 16, 2016
Issued at HKT 15:48
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