Following is a transcript of remarks by the Secretary of Development, Mr Eric Ma, at a media session after the duty visit to the Dongjiang River Basin in Guangdong with members of the Panel on Development of the Legislative Council today (April 15):
Reporter: A lot of critics have said that the Donjiang water is far too expensive. Has the Government said anything about this issue with the Mainland officials? And do you have any plans to take issue with this agenda?
Secretary for Development: Regarding the Dongjiang water supply agreement, as I mentioned earlier in Chinese, during this visit the Legislative Council members had raised about their concern on the price of the Dongjiang water. So in the forthcoming negotiation on the new three-year agreement with the Dongjiang authority, we will express the concern of the Legislative Council members and will take up this in the negotiation process.
Reporter: You also said that the water quality is generally very good, but are there any exceptional cases where you found that the water quality might be below standard?
Secretary for Development: In this visit, we visited the upper stream, the middle stream and even down to the Shenzhen Reservoir. During the whole process, we visited various locations and observed that the water quality in general is very good.
Reporter: Any exceptional cases?
Secretary for Development: We haven’t spotted any exceptional cases in this tour.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Saturday, April 15, 2017
Issued at HKT 19:56
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