We had no confidence in the future. The company was like vacuumed with the many resignations and retirements. We used to have 50 colleagues in our workshop, and we lost 10. They began to leave in 1990; the peak was from 1990 to 1992.

HAECO came up with two policies during the immigration wave. One of it was to cooperate with an Australian maintenance company, which agreed to issue passports to those sent from HAECO; the other was to introduce foreign experts to Hong Kong through an agency.

To help its employees to obtain passports, HAECO acquired an Australian maintenance company and directed some of the people to Australia. Then they could obtain Australian citizenship. That’s why many people in HAECO had Australian passport.

To keep hold of the old hands, HAECO cooperated with Australia during the immigration wave. The company helped its staffs to immigrate to Australia. It sent them to work in Australia and allowed them to come back to HAECO. Many of its employees left, mostly the engineer-rank. I guessed it lost 30% or 40% of its manpower. We were all scared after 1989. Many asked the company for their pensions so that they could leave anytime. The company said: take heart, you can have Hong Kong dollar or British pound or U.S. dollar. That’s because our pensions were all deposited in British banks.