Following is the transcript of remarks by the Acting Chief Executive, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, at a media session before the Executive Council meeting this morning (June 19):
Reporter: Mr Cheung, do you think the MTR has failed to submit its report yesterday? Is the Government going to penalise the MTR for that? And also, there are two further incidents coming out in the past week over the MTR saga – will the judge-led inquiry also investigate into these two incidents in the To Kwa Wan station as well as the exhibition centre?
Acting Chief Executive: The delay in submitting the report by MTR certainly is not satisfactory. In fact, the Director of Highways has already expressed our disappointment yesterday. And MTR promised to submit the report this morning, and apart from the To Kwa Wan report, they will also submit a report on the Exhibition station problem, involving underground support work. So we’re expecting two reports today from MTR.
On whether to extend the terms of reference on the Commission of Inquiry, I already responded yesterday at my function at the Tuen Mun Dragon Boat Festival. I said that the Chief Executive, Mrs Lam, when she announced the news of setting up the Commission of Inquiry last Tuesday, made it quite clear that we want, we really wish the terms of reference to be more focused on problems of the Hung Hom station, rather than spreading it too thin. The reason is very simple, the Hung Hom case is far more complex. We have other ways of tackling the other two issues, the so-called To Kwa Wan problem as well as the Exhibition station problem. There are ways and means of tackling it. It does not necessarily involve expanding the Commission of Inquiry’s terms of reference. We don’t want the Commission of Inquiry to overextend or overstretch itself. We want it more focus on the more complex problems. And in fact in the course of investigation, there will be certain issues common to all MTR contracts. I am sure that there will be some common denominators coming up in terms of, for example, work supervision. So, we’ll certainly kick-start the Commission of Inquiry as quick as possible and at the same time keep a very close eye on the entire Shatin-Central line. In fact, the Chairman of the MTR, Professor Fred Ma, also undertook to launch a thorough Investigation into the whole Shatin Central line. Thank you very much.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.) read more
