Government duty of care

An elderly woman (middle) receives the paper cutting cut into Chinese character "福" (fu), meaning 'blessing' or 'happiness' in English. [Photo/xinhuanet.com]

Financial and other aid to parents who have lost their single child for one reason or another is an obligation the government should never shirk, as their misery has resulted from the fact that it is the State policy that allowed them to have only one child.

With an amendment to the Population and Family Planning Law under discussion at the session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee at the weekend, whether the special financial aid from local governments to those parents who have lost their single child should be maintained turned out to be the issue for discussion. Some suggested that the aid should be scrapped as the family planning policy is now entering a new era in which all couples are allowed to have a second child. Actually, such aid ranges from 100 yuan ($15.4) to 200 yuan per month in different cities. In some places, it is even less than 100 yuan per month.

However, the majority of NPC deputies maintained that this aid should never be wavered. Instead such aid should be increased if possible. The amendment was adopted on Sunday.

They are absolutely right to have sympathy with these poor parents, who are now at least in their 40s and some even in their 50s or early 60s, who have no children to keep them company or care for them in their old age.

The government should now consider whether such aid should be increased to such an extent that it may help these people solve some of the difficulties they face in their lives. The government needs to act responsibly by offering these people, who dutifully observed the family planning policy and only had one child, the care and love they are badly in need of.

By doing so, the government would actually be fulfilling the promise it made in the early 1980s when it called on young couples to have only child.