With Care We Share - Labour and Welfare Initiatives in Policy Address

This year's Policy Address has unveiled a number of new and important initiatives in improving people's livelihood and care for the young and old.

The Government will also embark on several policy studies which will have far-reaching implications on the well-being of our people.

Together, they present important strategic policy directions that pave the way for a better tomorrow.

Employment is the bedrock of people's livelihood and the key to social harmony. The Government's decision to go for a minimum wage, which is expected to come on stream in the first half of 2011, will go a long way towards helping our grassroot workers.

However, for many low-wage earners, high transport cost is often a disincentive to work. To ease their burden and encourage them to stay in employment, we will roll out a Work Incentive Transport Subsidy Scheme (WITS) to help all eligible employees territory-wide meet part of their travelling expenses. The monthly allowance will be pitched at $600 per person.

WITS will be a vast improvement over the current Transport Support Scheme (TSS) on two counts. First, WITS will be a territory-wide programme, and not confined to four remote districts. Second, any eligible employee will be granted a monthly allowance without time limit, whereas a participant under TSS is only entitled to 12 months' subsidy at most.

The Government has also undertaken to conduct a study on standard working hours and consult relevant stakeholders.

Equally important is the full-fledged regularisation and extension of several social welfare measures. Indeed, this is a harvesting year for a series of successful pilot welfare projects.

To begin with, we will turn the pilot Integrated Discharge Support Programmes for the Elderly into a permanent scheme and extend it from three districts to all 18 districts in the next two years. The programme provides "one-stop" services for elders discharged from hospitals with a view to avoiding pre-mature or unnecessary institutionalisation owing to lack of care. The number of elders benefiting from this programme every year will rise significantly from the current 8 000 to 33 000.

Another area witnessing a breakthrough is childcare services. To step up support for parents who are unable to take care of their children temporarily because of work or other reasons, we will regularise the current pilot Neighbourhood Support Child Care Project and extend its coverage from 11 districts to all 18 districts.

We will also extend the Comprehensive Child Development Service, a joint cross-bureau, cross-discipline initiative, to the whole territory. This service enables the early identification of high-risk pregnant women, mothers and infants and their referral to suitable health or welfare service units for follow-up. This will help ease inter-generation poverty.

The well-being of our senior citizens is dear to our hearts. We will adhere to the policy objective of "ageing in place as the core, institutional care as back-up" as we know that most of our elders wish to age at home.

In the short to medium term, we will increase significantly subsidised community care places for the elderly and press ahead with the provision of residential care places at full steam. We are jointly examining with the Elderly Commission on how best we can cope with an ageing population. Offering more tax concessions as incentives for people to live with their elderly parents is also one option that the Government will consider.

In the long term, we will study the feasibility of providing maintenance allowance for elders who choose to retire in Guangdong. The Steering Committee on Population Policy, chaired by the Chief Secretary, will also examine ways to facilitate our elders to settle in the Mainland if they so wish.

The fact that we have decided to look proactively and carefully into the many difficult and structural issues underlines our commitment to identifying viable and long-term solutions.

Only through collaboration between the community, the business sector and the Government can we effectively help the disadvantaged groups and build a more caring society. The establishment of the $10 billion-Community Care Fund, with the Government and the private sector each contributing $5 billion, thus marks a significant step forward in tripartite cooperation in fostering a more caring and compassionate Hong Kong.

Ends/Friday, October 22, 2010