Food safety law to be enhanced

The Food Safety Bill is being formulated to require importers and distributors to register with the Food Safety Authority while the food business must keep records on food sources and distribution.

Secretary for Food & Health York Chow told the Legislative Council yesterday the bill will enable the government to trace a problem food's source and distribution more promptly and take proper measures to minimize its impact in the event of a food incident.

Compensation fund for airline wind-ups rejected

There are no plans to form a fund specifically for compensating travelers and travel agents in the event of an airline closure, Secretary for Transport & Housing Eva Cheng said yesterday.

She told the Legislative Council because airlines in the market at present are vastly different in scale, and internationally there is no precedence for setting up this type of funds, there would be significant difficulties implementing it. The levy of any compensation fund will often be borne by consumers and would likely lead to increases in airfares.

Three Direct Links

scheme to benefit HK

Economic and trade exchanges between the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan will become more liberal when the Three Direct Links scheme is implemented, Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Frederick Ma said. Ma told lawmakers that at the early stage of implementing the scheme, traffic between HK and Taiwan in respect of passengers destined for the major mainland cities through HK, and the cargo transhipments to and from ports outside the Pearl River Delta Region, could be slightly affected.

Civil service pay trend indices released

The net pay trend indicators for civil servants of upper, middle and lower salary bands are 6.3, 5.29 and 3.9 percent respectively after deducting the cost of civil service increments paid in 2007-08 from the gross pay trend indicators, the Civil Service Bureau said yesterday.

This followed the Pay Trend Survey Committee's validation of the 2008 Pay Trend Survey results. The survey found the average pay adjustments of 97 companies for the 12 months ending Apr 1 were 4.47 percent for the lower salary band, 5.87 percent for the middle and 6.9 percent for the upper band.

South Korean arrested in Macao for robbery

Macao police yesterday arrested a South Korean man at the airport for allegedly robbing a fellow countryman of HK$5 million on Tuesday.

Macao police said the suspect had an accomplice who had left Macao.

The two allegedly claimed they wanted to convert HK$5 million worth of Korean Won and asked the victim to bring the money and meet them in a hotel room where they attacked him with pepper spray and tied him up before fleeing the scene.

China Daily

(HK Edition 05/22/2008 page1)