The Deputy Secretary for Justice, Mr Cheung Kwok-kwan, leading a delegation comprising young lawyers and law students, continued his visit to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) today (September 8).

     This morning, Mr Cheung and the delegation visited the Huizhou Zhongkai Hong Kong-Macao Youth Entrepreneurship Base, and met with the Executive Deputy Head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Huizhou Municipal Committee, the Director of Bureau of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao Affairs of Huizhou Municipality, Ms Zhong Yonglan.

     At an experience sharing session on start-ups in the Mainland, they exchanged views with the Hong Kong young entrepreneurs regarding the challenges they faced, the legal services and support they needed for their business development. The Base, the first national technology business incubator in the Pearl River Delta region targeted youths of Hong Kong and Macao, seeks to build an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem for young people from these places.

     In the afternoon, they visited a well-established Mainland law firm in Huizhou to have in-depth exchanges with their local counterparts on the challenges in handling cross-boundary civil and commercial as well as arbitration matters and explore room for strengthening co-operation between the legal sectors of both places.

     Mr Cheung and his delegation then concluded the visit and returned to Hong Kong.

     Mr Cheung said that although the visit to Shenzhen was cancelled at the last minute due to extreme weather conditions, the visit to Huizhou has not only demonstrated the Department of Justice's commitment to connect with young lawyers, but also enabled young Hong Kong solicitors and barristers as well as law students, through interactive exchanges with their Mainland counterparts and enterprises, to have a deeper understanding of the opportunities in developing the legal services market in the Mainland, the challenges arising from foreign-related legal matters faced by the enterprises as well as the positive role Hong Kong legal professionals could play to contribute to the rule of law development of the GBA and the country.

              

     A spokesman for the Education Bureau (EDB) today (September 8) said that the EDB had stayed in contact with schools under the extreme conditions to understand their situations. The EDB has received more than 20 reports on damage to facilities in school premises, including cases of flooding, leakage, power outage and damage to objects or facilities. Individual school premises sustained serious damage. The EDB has been proactively assisting schools in carrying out emergency repairs and providing support to affected aided schools through the emergency repairs mechanism. The consultants and contractors assigned by the EDB have promptly contacted relevant schools to arrange appropriate repairs, including temporary repair works, to assist them to resume normal operations as soon as possible.

     "To ensure the safety of students and their smooth schooling, if the premises or the surrounding environment of individual schools are still undergoing cleaning or repair works, schools may decide whether to continue to suspend face-to-face classes and school activities tomorrow (September 9) and on Monday (September 11) according to their school-based needs. They should inform all parents and students of the arrangements as soon as possible," the spokesman said.
 
     Regarding schooling of cross-boundary students, the EDB has kept in touch with relevant schools and school bus companies, and has been providing parents with the latest information on the transportation arrangements of boundary control points through schools.
 
     The EDB will continue to maintain close liaison with schools and provide appropriate support and advice.

The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:

     The Hospital Authority (HA) announces that, upon the cancellation of the extreme condition, the services of its general out-patient clinics, specialist out-patient clinics, allied health services and other day services will resume normal. Patient can attend consultations according to their appointment. Patients, whose appointments had been affected during the extreme condition in force, are advised to make a new appointment. The HA has enhanced manpower and service quota so as to rearrange appointments for the patients affected as early as possible. 

     The HA spokesman said, "Due to the bad weather, some patients were unable to attend their consultations. It is anticipated that the number of patients will increase in the coming few days. The HA has adopted different measures to enhance manpower and service capacity so as to cope with the demand and to render assistance to patients in need."

     Under the bad weather, some medical facilities were damaged. The HA has arranged maintenance staff to commence repairs immediately to ascertain patient service not affected. The HA appeals to the public for understanding.

     The HA has inspected its medical facilities. The pavement nearby Shau Kei Wan Jockey Club General Out-patient Clinic (1/F, 8 Chai Wan Road, Shau Kei Wan) was found severely damaged, posing danger to patients. The clinic will be temporarily closed and the HA has arrnged the patients who have appointment at the clinic tomorrow (September 9) to attend the Sai Wan Ho General Out-patient Clinic (1/F, 28 Tai Hong Street, Sai Wan Ho). Emergency repair works have been arranged with related departments so as to resume the services as soon as possible.
 

     The Leisure and Cultural Services Department announced today (September 8) that due to urgent clearance and inspection works after the extreme weather conditions, all gazetted beaches under LCSD management will be temporarily closed tomorrow (September 9) until further notice.

     The Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Chan Kwok-ki, held a joint press conference today (September 8) on the Government's work to cope with the extensive flooding caused by the torrential rain brought by the low pressure associated with the remnants of Haikui. The Deputy Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Cheuk Wing-hing; the Secretary for Security, Mr Tang Ping-keung; the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Chris Sun; the Director of Highways, Mr Jimmy Chan; the Director of Fire Services, Mr Andy Yeung; the Director of Home Affairs, Mrs Alice Cheung; the Commissioner for Transport, Ms Angela Lee; the Acting Director of Drainage Services, Mr Chui Si-kay; the Acting Director of the Hong Kong Observatory, Mr Lee Lap-shun; and the Acting Head of Geo Engineering Office and Deputy Commissioner of Mines, Mr Cheung Ping-yip, also attended. Following is the transcript of remarks of the press conference:

Reporter: Hi, a few questions. First, comparing to the Government's advanced preparation in handling super typhoon Saola, is the Government unprepared for the flooding and reacting too late this time, when officials only meet the public 15 hours after the rainfall broke history record, and why isn't the Chief Executive meeting the press? Second, why hasn't the Government used the $150 million emergency system to remind residents on the flooding? Third, why does Hong Kong suffer from flooding severely this time? Why is Wong Tai Sin hit in particular and are the drainage systems clogged? If so, why aren't they fixed before the storm? Thank you.

Chief Secretary for Administration: Thank you for your questions. First of all, I think as our colleague from the Hong Kong Observatory has just mentioned, this heavy rain’s predictability is very low when compared with a typhoon. In a typhoon, we can make an early prediction, so we can make early preparation. But for this heavy rain, it was really so big that, as mentioned by our colleague, it was once in 500 years. It's so big and so sudden and the predictability is so low. That's why we cannot act as (in the case of) the former typhoon Saola that we can do the announcement very early beforehand.

     For the Chief Executive, as I mentioned, he did issue the (social media post) as early as around 1.30am, reminding members of the public to be very careful because of the heavy rain. Throughout the night, the Chief Executive has always been giving us the steer and directives on how to tackle the problem.

     For the $150 million (emergency alert) system, actually this time, we have issued different heavy rain signals to the public. I think the announcement is already enough to alert all members of the public.

     For the flooding drainage system, may I invite our colleague to reply to this question.
 
Acting Director of Drainage Services: The flooding problem this time during last night is mainly due to heavy rainfall. The drainage system has been operated according to our performance and design standard. During the rainfall event, we have mobilised our emergency gangs to attend to over 60 flooding cases. Most of them has been rectified before noon today.

Deputy Chief Secretary for Administration:  The purpose of issuing emergency notification via SMS is really to alert the public to very sudden emergencies such as power failure, but in this present case, the onset of the Black Rainstorm is very clear. I think any members of the public who are still awake would have noticed this heavy rainstorm situation, so it won't be necessary to use that system to send SMS (messages) to individual citizens to just really stating the obvious.
 
 (Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)