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Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Henry Tang, at a meet-the-media session at the Legislative Council Building today (December 3):
Reporter: Mr Tang, since the maid's levy, the fruit money, now the chartered flight issue, every time the Government has been switching their mind within days, is there still any sort of integrity with this Government, should the people still trust them?
Chief Secretary for Administration: I believe that the Government has the people's interests in mind. We have a system to handle people who are stranded overseas in times of overseas incidents, which include many different kinds of incidents including strike, disturbances, as well as much more hostile situations. So we have a system to handle it. We have been following the system, and the system has been working well. But in this particular incident, it has revealed that there are certain inadequacies in the system, and that's why we are reviewing the system. As far as why we decided to charter flight on Monday, because we have reasons to worry, to be concerned that the situation in Thailand will deteriorate, and therefore we changed our mind and decided to charter flight.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Issued at HKT 16:05
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