Social welfare is tipped to be one of the major policy areas that Chief Executive (CE) Leung Chun-ying will highlight when he delivers his first Policy Address on Wednesday.

Law Chi-kwong, associate professor of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong, predicts Leung will set out mid and long-term plans for improving social welfare services, rather than resorting to specific measures that can be implemented immediately.

In the first few months of his tenure, Leung has implemented several important welfare measures: the Old Age Living Allowance, the HK$2 transportation subsidy for the elderly and the dual track system for the work incentive transportation allowance, for which both individuals and families may apply.

For this reason, Law does not anticipate any "big deals" pertaining to the welfare sector in the coming Policy Address. "He has already launched whatever viable short-term specific welfare measures are available prior to the Policy Address," Law said.

"So I guess he will only cover certain welfare measures as a future policy direction, for example, asking the business community to play greater role in poverty alleviation. As for universal retirement protection, I think he will say the Commission on Poverty will study this issue, while the Old Age Living Allowance can help the needy in the short run."

Law also agreed that the Commission on Poverty should establish a poverty line. In his view, this would serve two main purposes: to assess the effectiveness of the government's welfare policies and to facilitate discussion in a more focused manner.

For the mid and long-term, Law thinks it is necessary to overhaul the current Comprehensive Social Security Allowance (CSSA) scheme by singling out the Old Age Allowance (OAA) and Disabled Allowance (DA) as independent allowances.

"In my opinion, the OAA is likely to be singled out, because it is different in nature from the allowances for the unemployed, disabled and for single-parents. If the OAA remained part of the CSSA with other allowances, there would be very little flexibility for the OAA.

"Given there are nearly 1 million elderly people in Hong Kong, it is worth treating the OAA as an individual allowance, particularly if Hong Kong pursues a universal retirement protection scheme in future. As far as I know, the top government hierarchy is close to a consensus on this issue and the CE may mention the separation of OAA from the CSSA in the Policy Address," he explained.

Law said he believes it is very important to have long-term welfare plans, in order to ascertain actual service demands. For instance, there are very long queues for hostel services for the elderly and the disabled. Both types of hostels need to be purpose-built, and require long-term planning and design, eight to 10 years in advance. The planning needs to be followed by acquisition of suitable sites and public consultation.

"As far as public consultation is concerned, the plans to build hostels for the elderly and the disabled in local communities must be sealed before the residents move in, so that nobody will oppose," Law said, explaining that residents cannot oppose if such welfare facilities are already in place when they move into the neighborhoods.

joseph@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 01/16/2013 page1)