Following is the speech by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, at the Jockey Club Smart Ageing Hub Opening Ceremony and Symposium today (October 27):
I want to say a few words in English. We are very grateful for the overseas speakers particularly, sharing your expertise and experience.
Hong Kong is an open international community. We are open to ideas from different places. With the ageing population, as I said in Chinese earlier, we face a huge challenge here in Hong Kong, particularly the growing ageing community and increasing demand for elderly care and services. Elderly services are the top priority for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. For every $100 we spend every day, $20 goes to elderly in terms of cash assistance, medical care, home care and elderly care. That underlines the importance we attach to it.
We will continue to invest heavily in elderly services because we have to pay back to the elderly population as they contributed to Hong Kong during their young days. Without the elderly, Hong Kong would not be a vibrant community today. So, we have to be grateful and make sure that they will have happy golden years for the remaining part of their life. But in the process, we need joint effort from everybody, not just from the government alone. We have to build a coalition among academia, government, NGOs, and also of course, stakeholders to ensure that elderly services are really up to speed and meet the aspirations and expectations of the whole community.
Finally, before I leave the stage, I would like to add one more point. Professor Tong and overseas speakers, please take time to see a bit of Hong Kong. If you have time, please take the very exciting journey through the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the high speed rail, get a few glimpse of the mega project of the century – the world's largest sea-crossing. It is really an engineering marvel.
Thank you very much indeed.
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