【明報專訊】THE CURRENT TERM of government is to expire shortly. To fulfil one of his election promises, Leung Chun-ying, the Chief Executive, has proposed a "contractual working hours" plan as his way of settling the matter of labour rights. But the proposed plan, a departure from what was originally intended, will only legitimise the exploitation of people working long hours and could present more obstacles than opportunities to the fight for standard working hours legislation. Representatives of employees have lambasted the plan as a piece of haphazard work by an outgoing government. This is a fair comment. A plan of such poor quality proposed by a government trying to "meet a deadline" will only sow the seeds of future problems, and it is not worth mentioning at all. Apart from the "contractual working hours" issue, the labour sector's attention is on how the government will handle another issue within the next two weeks: the abolishment of the offsetting mechanism of the Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF). If the government once again finds it impossible to address employees' legitimate demand, it should leave the matter to the next administration instead of trying to fulfil election promises just for the sake of it and thus exhibiting its weakness.