Parents need help over costs of textbooks, says watchdog

The Consumer Council yesterday called on schools and the Education Bureau to consider helping parents with the rising costs of primary and secondary school textbooks.

One solution, the watchdog said, was for schools to purchase textbooks and pass them along from one group of students to the next.

'This is environmentally friendly, it can also ensure students will get the right edition,' said Ambrose Ho, chairman of the group's publicity and community relations committee. 'Students will learn to value property which would be commonly shared, [they will] learn to recycle and learn to treasure precious resources.'

The council has already put its suggestion to the bureau, which is 'considering various options', Mr Ho said.

A bureau spokesman said it was 'in the process of setting up a working group to look into the rise of textbook prices and use of e-textbooks'.

The council's annual survey on textbook spending found costs have increased over the past year. 'Based on data from 53 primary and 45 secondary schools, the council has found the average textbook expenditure was HK$2,153 for primary and HK$1,947 for secondary,' Mr Ho said.

'This year's expenditures have shown an increase of 5.9 per cent for the primary sector and 6 per cent for the secondary sector compared with last year's expenditures of the same sampled schools.'

Mr Ho said some schools invited bookstores to hold sales on their premises and parents were offered discounts if they bought a complete set of textbooks. But there were drawbacks - other bookstores may decide not to stock the books and parents may not easily find places to buy used textbooks, he added.

There was, however, 'a welcome trend', Mr Ho said. 'More schools now are organising their own ... second-hand sales and encourage second-hand donations.'

The bureau spokesman said schools could decide whether to invite bookstores into their facilities but 'before making a decision, schools should solicit support from parent-teacher associations, and should take into account the pros and cons'.

'Schools should also keep parents and students well informed of details of such an arrangement, and let them know they have every right not to purchase textbooks in schools,' the spokesman said.

'With regard to the suggestion of schools purchasing textbooks, the bureau notices some schools are working this way and hopes more schools would consider following suit.'

Discussion question: Do you think the prices of textbooks are not reasonable? Are the methods suggested in this article helpful in easing parents' financial burden?

Text P for panic

Amid the global storm, a soaking for the biggest Chinese bank in Hong Kong

IN THE West it is not uncommon these days to hear rumours flying around financial markets about troubled banks. But in Hong Kong on September 24th the rumours were disseminated by text messages, and they were not directed at shareholders. They were received by depositors at the Bank of East Asia, Hong Kong’s largest locally owned lender. As the day wore on, people lined the pavements outside the bank branches, quietly determined to withdraw their cash. “No worry, it is our culture,” said one man, explaining the calm. He had been sent by his boss to transfer the money to HSBC, Hong Kong’s historic financial rock.

The 90-year-old Bank of East Asia blamed “malicious rumours” for the incident and said they were false. The text messages had referred to the bank’s losses through exposure to American International Group (AIG), the global insurance giant that was in effect taken over by the American government on September 16th, and Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street bank that collapsed a day earlier. To allay fears, the bank disclosed that it had exposure to AIG and Lehman of HK$473m ($61m), just under 1% of regulatory capital. It extended its opening hours, dispatched guards to ensure queues were orderly and distributed leaflets noting that it was heavily capitalised and liquid, a position endorsed by the local monetary authority.

Hong Kong has experienced bank runs before, most recently in 1997 during the Asian financial crisis. Deposit insurance used to be non-existent and it remains small, covering only the first HK$100,000. But banks in the city are thought to be well capitalised and fairly insulated from the global credit crunch. They are in better shape than others in the region, such as Australian banks, which have seen interbank funding costs soar, leading the Federal Reserve to open a dollar swap line this week with the Reserve Bank of Australia.

The Bank of East Asia is a special case in Hong Kong, however. In February its well-connected boss, David Li, settled American insider-trading charges. More recently, a “rogue trader” cost the bank HK$93m. On September 19th Moody’s, a rating agency, shifted its outlook on the bank’s debt to negative (although it is still investment grade).

In response to the run, the Hong Kong authorities voiced their support for the bank, and a tycoon bought shares. They rose on September 25th as normality returned. But banks everywhere should pay attention. As storms batter global finance, depositors’ fingers are on the panic button. And that button may now be on their mobile phones.

Discussion question:

Hong Kong people are getting more accustomed to sending SMSs and emails to their friends and relatives of the so-called "inside news" ranging from typhoon forecast to financial "tips". Do you think this can create problems? If yes, what are the potential problems?

A crisis made worse

The whole world was impressed by the marvellous Olympics, an extraordinary "coming out" party for China as it seeks its rightful place in the international community. But evidence is increasing that the country's obsession with the Games led it to take its attention off other, equally important, issues - including food safety.

In an attempt to ensure that the media would be suffused with good news, the Communist Party's propaganda department put out a directive to the nation's media in the months leading up to the Olympics. The eighth point said: "All food safety issues, such as cancer-causing mineral water, are off limits."

So, the success of the Olympics was given priority over the health of the Chinese people. And, in the weeks and months leading up to the Games, the government's attention was narrowly focused on such things as the Olympic torch relay.

The Australian newspaper reported on Saturday on comments by Chinese blogger Wu Qing - the daughter of Sanlu Group executive chairwoman Tian Wenhua , who has been sacked and arrested. She wrote that her mother had reported the milk contamination to the government of Shijiazhuang , where Sanlu has its headquarters. But, Ms Wu wrote, it was at the time when the Olympic torch was arriving in the city, and the government did not respond "because it wanted to ensure that, in its own words, the torch came first, nothing else mattered".

Ms Wu is no impartial observer but it is a fact that Sanlu did, belatedly, report the contamination to the local government, which did not take action for over a month. It appears entirely possible that this was a result of Olympic fever.

Vice-governor Yang Chongyong of Hebei province - whose capital is Shijiazhuang - has acknowledged that Sanlu, a highly respected company that is the official supplier of milk powder to Chinese astronauts, sent a report to the municipal government on August 2, six days before the opening of the Games. However, the Shijiazhuang government did not pass it up the chain of command.

Since the scandal came to light, Beijing has been asked if Olympic athletes were also exposed to contaminated dairy products. Li Changjiang , who has just resigned as head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, responded: "All products supplied to the Olympics and Paralympics were secure. We applied special scanning management procedures for all Olympic products. All stages of food product supplies - including milk products - were step-by-step strictly monitored by us, with no loopholes in the process."

Senior Chinese officials, too, received special food. An organisation called the State Council Party and State Organisations Special Food Supply Centre, formed in 2004, sees to it that senior party and state officials receive specially monitored food supplies.

Thus, it appears, only the masses were exposed to poisonous milk - vulnerable people who rely on the government to protect them. Authorities say at least four babies have died and more than 52,000 have fallen ill.

Beijing is so sensitive to any hint that the Olympics was responsible for the tainted milk scandal that internet postings about the issue have been deleted almost immediately.

The tainted milk remained on store shelves for as long as it did because Beijing took no action. And it took no action because, it explains, the chain of command broke down, with lower levels of government not reporting to higher levels.

But there is a simple solution: use the media. If it had been free to report bad news, central government officials would have read or heard about the scandal earlier.

By neutering the media, Beijing is emasculating its most potent ally in the fight against crime, corruption and government incompetence. Let's hope that the babies who died and the many thousands who remain sick will finally teach the government a lesson: the free media is your friend, not your enemy.

Discussion question:

It is said that the Chinese government put too much emphasis on the Olympics and this led to the problem of tainted milk indirectly. Do you think so?

Mass recall of China milk produce (BBC News)

Shop shelves across China are being cleared of popular dairy products after tests found contamination in regular milk as well as baby milk powder.

Inspectors found that 10% of liquid milk from three of China's dairies was tainted with melamine.

The scandal first came to light in milk powder that killed four infants and sickened more than 6,000 others.

Suppliers are suspected of diluting milk to cut costs, then adding melamine to make it appear higher in protein.

Melamine is an industrial chemical normally used in plastics, and is banned from food stuffs.

Recalls

China's quality watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, tested liquid milk from three dairies.

Its website said 10% of the milk from the country's two largest - Mengniu Dairy Group and Yili Industrial Group - contained up to 8.4 milligrams of melamine per kg.

Products from Shanghai-based Bright Dairy were also contaminated, it said.

Although Chinese officials sought to allay panic by insisting most milk was safe to drink, reaction to the news was swift.

Two Hong Kong supermarkets, Wellcome and Park'n Shop, on Friday cleared their shelves of Mengniu brands.

A day earlier, the Hong Kong government recalled Yili products, after tests found milk, ice-cream and yoghurt to be contaminated with melamine.

Singaporean retailers were also advised to pull Yili yoghurt ice bars from their shelves.

Starbucks stopped offering milk supplied by Mengniu at two-thirds of its outlets across China, although it stressed none of its staff or customers had fallen ill from the milk.

The EU and the US said they wanted to know how the scandal was allowed to develop - in order to ensure future overseas confidence in Chinese exports.

Meanwhile, foreign firms which import milk powder to China have pledged not to take advantage of the scandal by raising prices, Reuters news agency reports.

Anger

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said it would "strictly find out the reason for adding the melamine and severely punish those who are responsible".

All the batches that tested positive were being recalled, it said.

The BBC's James Reynolds in Beijing says it is not being suggested that anyone has fallen ill from drinking liquid milk contaminated with melamine.

But he says people are extremely angry to learn that more and more products have been found to be unsafe.

One 31-year-old man queuing at Sanlu offices in Shijiazhuang to get a reimbursement for medical exam payments for his baby told Associated Press news agency: "If such a big company is having problems, then I really don't know who to trust."

The scandal broke last week after the Sanlu Group said it had sold melamine-laced milk powder.

Of those children made sick, more than 150 are said to have acute kidney failure.

Chinese police have arrested 18 people in connection with the scandal.

China's ability to police its food production industries has long been under question.

Health scares and fatalities in recent years have ranged from the contamination of seafood to toothpaste and, last year, to pet food exported to the US.

Discussion topic:
Do you think the Hong Kong government has done enough to ensure the safety of our milk products?

Bad habits blamed as study shows children are getting fatter

About 15 per cent of children in Hong Kong are overweight because they have poor diets and habits, a study has found.

The figure in 1993 was 10 per cent, according to figures provided by Rita Sung Yn-tz, a professor in the department of paediatrics at Chinese University. She says children increasingly eat at restaurants, skip breakfast and sleep late, which all contribute to weight gain.

Professor Sung and other researchers conducted the study in the 2005-6 academic year, measuring the weight, height, and waists of 14,842 students aged six to 18 at 36 schools.

A child was defined as overweight if the ratio of their height to weight was 20 per cent above the median.

"Obesity has been going up for some time now," said Terry Ting Ho-yan, president of the Hong Kong Nutrition Association.

He said Hongkongers were not very knowledgeable about nutrition and as they grew wealthier bought more food for their children. Adding to the problem, youngsters did not exercise as much as they did in the 1970s and 1980s, and had convenient forms of transport to save them the effort of walking, he said.

Official figures tell a similar story. The proportion of overweight children had risen from 17.8 per cent to 18.9 per cent over the past three academic years, according to figures from the Department of Health's Student Health Service. In 1995-6, the figure was 16.1 per cent.

Overweight children were more likely to have - or develop in later life - obstructive sleep apnoea, a fatty liver and cardiovascular diseases, said Albert Li Man-chim, a professor in the department of paediatrics who contributed to the study. They had double the chance of developing diabetes and were 10 times more likely to have sleep problems, he said.

To give educators an easier way of finding out whether children are obese, the researchers devised a tape that measures obesity by waist circumference. If a child's waist circumference is thicker than 95 per cent of the circumferences recorded for their age group in the study, they are considered obese. The university produced 5,000 tapes and will distribute them to schools.

They chose that measurement because it was good for indicating health risk factors, and a tape was more convenient than using body mass indexes or going to public health centres for assessments, Professor Sung said.

Discussion topic:
In view of the problem of the increase in obese children in Hong Kong, there are voices suggesting more emphasis should be put on physical education. One suggestion is to increase the amount of P.E. lessons. Do you think it is acceptable to have more P.E. lessons for students in Hong Kong?

Group criticises removal of old trees

Association accuses officials of keeping public in dark over management of plants

The Leisure and Cultural Services Department has come under fire again for keeping the public in the dark about the recent removal of at least two registered old and valuable trees.

The Conservancy Association said the removals showed the department's lack of transparency in managing registered trees.

The department was criticised after university student Kitty Chong Chung-yin was killed when part of a tree collapsed on her while she was walking along Stanley Main Street last week. The department had said the tree was in an acceptable state when it carried out a detailed inspection one month earlier.

The association recently discovered that a 15-metre Sydney blue gum in Victoria Park had been cut down after it was suspected of being uprooted during Typhoon Nuri last month. Leaves of the tree were sparse, indicating the plant was in bad health.

A shrubby woodfordia at Chater Garden in Central had also been removed after it had been ailing for some time. The tree was simply a bare trunk with no leaves.

Neither removal was made public nor explained by the department.

Last night, the department revealed there were actually seven old and valuable trees blown over by storms this year, and two were chopped down as they were in danger of collapse.

Peter Li Siu-man, public affairs manager of the Conservancy Association, said it had written to the Development Bureau and Home Affairs Bureau demanding a review on the urban tree-protection mechanism.

"The real issue is not about professionalism of tree officers but what is actually being done to protect the trees. The public has the right to know if the issue is related to public safety," Mr Li said.

So Kwok-yin, a tree expert with the association who has been assisting police with the inquiry into the Stanley fatality, said he had found the department unwilling to release and share information about trees at risk.

As part of the four-member expert group advising the department on registered trees, Mr So said he was never systematically briefed about the tree-inspection procedures.

In response to the criticism, the department only said the two trees were "blown down".

"Currently, having taken into account the public safety, we have accorded priority to field work on inspection of trees, the updating of the registry has to be accorded lower priority," it said.

The department said yesterday that it had sent its condolences to the family of Kitty Chong but did not provide more details.

Meanwhile, government workers yesterday cut down an 18-metre tree from near the junction of Stanley Village Road and Carmel Road. The action was prompted by complaints that the tree, believed to be a big-leaved fig, was diseased and in danger of collapse.


Discussion question: Recently, the action of LCSD to remove old trees with potential danger was criticized for keeping the public in the dark. Do you think it is right for the LCSD to remove the old trees without the approval from the citizens? (Please leave your comment of not less than 150 words)