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Following is the transcript (English portion) of remarks made by the Secretary for the Environment, Mr Edward Yau, at a media session after the Presentation and Launching Ceremony of the Hong Kong Awards for Environmental Excellence at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre this afternoon (March 27):
Reporter: ... Australian travel alert on air pollution ...?
Secretary for the Environment: We have enquired and given to understand that the Australian Government has recently updated their travel advice to their nationals. Among other Asian cities, they have added Hong Kong into their travel advice as regards to air quality. As you all know, Hong Kong places very high emphasis on improving our air quality. That's the reason why we have recently (proposed to) update our air quality objectives, benchmarking on World Health Organisationˇ¦s standard. It's a great job ahead of us to do the utmost to improve our air quality.
Reporter: ... travel advice...?
Secretary for the Environment: I think we take the travel advice as a reminder that we all need to work doubly hard to clean up our air, not just for tourists per se but for all the people who are living here, working here, and also travelling here. I hope that the Government's upcoming review of air quality objectives will be a good demonstration of our determination and efforts to make Hong Kong a cleaner and greener city.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Friday, March 27, 2009
Issued at HKT 19:06
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