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The Chief Secretary for Administration and Chairperson of the Commission on Poverty (CoP), Mrs Carrie Lam; the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, and the Chairperson of the Community Care Fund Task Force under the CoP, Dr Law Chi-kwong met the media after CoP meeting this afternoon (June 13). Following is the transcript of remarks:
Reporter: Mrs Lam, is there a timetable as to when the consultant's report will be published, and are you confident that you know, we can take a step forward in the offsetting mechanism?
Chief Secretary for Administration: We have commissioned an independent consultancy to collate public opinion on retirement protection and to produce a report. According to the terms in the contract, this independent consultant has up to the end of this year to submit a report to the Commission on Poverty, but I have told the Commission on Poverty at the meeting just now that we will very much love to expedite the process, so we will discuss with the consultant on whether their report – their report is actually a factual independent report – whether it could be submitted to the Commission on Poverty as early as possible, and not towards the end of this year, so that we could achieve the goal that we have set for ourselves at the beginning of this exercise. We very much hope to be able to set a policy direction for the future retirement protection in Hong Kong within this term of the Hong Kong SAR Government, that is before end-June next year.
Whether we could achieve it, this is a very good question and a very challenging one. I can only say at this stage we would try our very best. Matthew, myself and other related colleagues will try our very best to achieve that objective.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, June 13, 2016
Issued at HKT 21:10
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