The Sars crisis has revealed young people are interested in social issues and keen to participate in society, according to the results of a recent youth survey on the outbreak.
The comment came after Caritas Community Services surveyed 766 young people on how Sars had affected them.
About one-third of the respondents, aged from 11 to 35, said Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa had failed to meet public expectations in handling the Sars crisis.
More than two-thirds were eager to keep track of daily news during the outbreak. The same number said they would continue to do so when Sars was dying out.
Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung, applied social sciences lecturer at Polytechnic University, said young people could not take ownership of their community if the government continued to ignore their voices.
'Almost all respondents who were asked to pick an underperforming official chose Mr Tung,' he said. 'The chief executive should really evaluate his policies.'