Press Releases

The following is the briefing note issued at the press conference chaired by the Secretary for Health and Welfare, Dr E K yeoh, today (October 13):-

In this year's Policy Address, the Chief Executive said that the plight of low-income families had aroused much public concern and action was required to tackle the issue. The full impact of the economic recovery has yet to be seen by all in the community. Enhanced support and additional interim measures are required to assist those in genuine need of assistance.

Poverty is a complex issue and has been defined in various ways and in many dimensions; one example refers to unacceptable deprivation in a human being. It does not only concern money; it also embraces deficiencies in other social areas such as housing, education, nutrition and health and equalization of opportunities. Consequently, we need to develop comprehensive and multi-faceted solutions aimed at meeting the specific needs of all socially vulnerable individuals. Hence the focus should not be confined to purely monetary considerations �V important as they are.

The key lies in the Government continuing to adhere to market principles which have served HK well in the past by providing the necessary flexibility to adjust to changes in economic circumstances. It is important that the Government does its best to create a first-class business environment, to promote economic growth, and to broaden the economic base in order to increase job opportunities.

The best approach is therefore to cultivate economic growth, facilitate human development (by providing education, training and retraining opportunities to ensure that our people have the necessary skills and qualifications for the new economy) and increase social investment.

Our immediate priority is to assist the socially vulnerable to improve their position, especially those who have been in that situation for a considerable time and those who have limited capacity to achieve upward mobility.

Employment provides the route for upward social mobility but we accept that there will always be some in our community who need more direct assistance for a time. CSSA is our basic safety net for those who lack the financial means. Nevertheless, the culture of self-reliance is strong in HK and should be actively encouraged. That is why we recently introduced the Support for Self-Reliance Scheme to help some CSSA recipients, particularly the unemployed, rejoin the workforce.

In addition to our social security program, our public programs on housing, health care, rehabilitation, education and social welfare also provide additional social wages to the economically disadvantaged members of society. Job creation and enhanced training together are needed for groups of socially disadvantaged individuals if they are not to become socially deprived in the long-term.

To help achieve this, the Government will inject over the next two financial years $2.7 billion to fund the job creation, skills upgrading and retraining initiatives, and to enable needy students to use computers at home.

Job Creation

Over the next two years, the Government will create about 15,000 jobs excluding those resulting from infrastructural projects. Of these, 8,000 will result from normal expansion of Government services while the other 7,000 include.

- 1,950 jobs in the social welfare sector, a significant number of which will be created on a permanent basis. More care assistants will be provided to help the frail elderly and the disabled. Our outreach services to young night drifters, disrupted families and new arrival families will be strengthened. A significant number of new programme assistant posts (over 900) will be created to provide more community support services for elders, the disabled and young people.

- 1,730 new jobs will be created for a two-year period in support of the revamped Clean HK Campaign.

- Another 2,500 jobs will be created to improve the quality of domestic services in our hospitals and to enhance the care available to elders and mentally ill in our community.

- 500 jobs in district environmental improvement and community involvement projects.

- 270 jobs in support of expanded Anti-smoking, Healthy Ageing and Health Promotion campaigns.

These initiatives have a number of benefits -

- the number of jobs to be created will give rise to more job opportunities, thus bringing immediate relief to the labour market;

- the support services will enable the socially disadvantaged to re-enter the job market;

- quality of life will be improved for many socially disadvantaged groups since social service provision will be enhanced; and

- the community will be better able to optimize its human resources potential and build up its social capital.

We will use existing mechanisms in departments and agencies for job placement and training (i.e. Labour Department, Vocational Training Council, Employees Retraining Board and Social Welfare Department) and to enhance some of the existing social services in the welfare sector to

- strengthen social welfare networks in the districts both to outreach and inreach, to source the more disadvantaged members of society, redirecting these individuals to the services and agencies which can better serve their needs;

- refer target job-seekers to fill newly-created jobs on a time-limited basis and/or to receive training/re-training, if necessary; and

- provide support services, such as counselling, child-minding, to enable them to be in sustained employment even after serving in the placement programme.

Skills Upgrading

- To promote skills upgrading, a new program costing $400 million over the next two years will be launched for elementary workers. The program, covering mainly industry-specific skills, will facilitate elementary workers to upgrade their skills to adapt to the changing needs of the economy. We estimate that about 50,000 workers will benefit.

- The Labour Department will introduce a pilot project to assist the long-term unemployed find work. The focus will be on people over the age of 40 who have been unemployed for more than three months. The program involves employment counselling, training needs analysis, pre-employment training and a one-month work trial with payment of a training subsidy to the employer.

- The Employees Retraining Board (ERB) now offers nearly 100,000 retraining places every year. Recurrent annual subvention of $400 million will be allocated to the ERB.

- The ERB has recently introduced self-employment courses, covering areas such as home help, home/office repair and maintenance, cleansing and hairdressing and beauty services. To tie in with this new initiative, consideration will be given to establishing a fund to provide assistance to retrainees who had completed the self-employment courses so as to facilitate the starting up of their own businesses.

End/Friday, October 13, 2000

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