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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mrs Carrie Lam, at a media session after officiating at the launch ceremony of the "Hong Kong: Our Home" Campaign at the Hong Kong Museum of History today (April 23):
Reporter: If you could spell out the objectives of this campaign ¡V is there too much negative energy in society? How will this help? And further there are concerns about whether the money is going to the government ¡K¡K
Chief Secretary for Administration: The "Hong Kong: Our Home" Campaign was really for the Government to build a platform, for different sectors in society to contribute to this platform and to spread positive energy and positive message around society so that we could build greater social cohesion, we could promote mutual care and concern and compassion for different members of society. It doesn't mean that we feel that Hong Kong at the moment is full of negative sentiments, but we do feel that the time has come for us to really bring together different sectors of the community and to really take pride in our city, Hong Kong.
As far as your second question about the Disaster Relief Fund, in fact there is no conflict between the Hong Kong SAR Government making a relief grant to a relevant government which has a lot of victims as a result of a disaster, in this case a major earthquake, and the NGOs' applications. We have already met with most of the NGOs which have been applying for funds from the Disaster Relief Fund in the past yesterday. They also indicated that they are preparing their proposals and they will come back to apply for funds to do more emergency relief in Sichuan Province. We will process those applications as soon as possible.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Issued at HKT 18:33
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