Director’s Message

It is my privilege to present our Social and Environmental Report 2007/08. This report continues to use the Triple Bottom Line approach to highlight our environmental, social and economic performance with reference to the Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines, with a view to maintaining a high level of openness and transparency in our communication with stakeholders.

EMSD conducts a diverse range of activities in both our Trading Services and Regulatory Services. We have always been mindful of our social and environmental responsibilities in addition to our obligation to be economically viable.

We have for many years played a pioneering role in promoting energy efficiency and the wider use of renewable energy in Hong Kong. Internally, we have continued to achieve significant energy savings in our daily operations: our electricity consumption decreased by more than 6% on the previous year, thanks to the use of new energy efficient technologies and good housekeeping. We actively support our client departments to implement energy saving and renewable energy projects. Through promotion and public education programmes, we continue to promote community awareness of the need to conserve energy for the common good.

Occupational health and safety of our staff remains one of our top priorities. Although our performance in this area has been improving in recent years, we believe that there is still room for improvement. A closer look at the statistics shows that some of the incidents are due to unsafe behaviour and inadequate awareness amongst staff in the workplace. We shall therefore introduce a behaviour-based safety model in 2008/09 with a view to fostering higher safety awareness amongst staff.

As Hong Kong enters a new phase of infrastructure growth, new economic activities such as railway development have brought new opportunities for both our Trading and Regulatory Services to expand our scope of work, such as setting up the Railways Branch in February 2008 to oversee railway safety. In these new areas of work, we shall also endeavour to ensure that the key social, environmental and economic parameters are addressed.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our colleagues and stakeholders for their commitment and good work, without which this report would not be possible. I look forward to another year of collaboration and success.