Press Releases

Transcript of Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food

Following is a transcript of the remarks made by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at a media session after attending a radio programme this morning (March 1):

Reporter: Dr Yeoh, can I have one English question? When you say that some organisations are painting a wrong picture to those elderly, what do you mean by that?

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: I wasn't making an accusation. I just wish to clarify. I was saying that from my experience because every day my secretary gets a lot of telephone calls. Sometimes it is from irate people who complain about our policies, about operations. Sometimes it is from older persons who don't understand the policies and we not infrequently hear that there are people prompting the older persons to say certain things. Of course, there are a lot of misunderstandings so I certainly hope that it is not prevalent in the community because it frightens the elders. And of course we have a lot of social workers in our non-governmental organisations, in the Social Welfare Department, and medical social workers in our hospitals who help us spread the appropriate message. They would be able to tell older persons what the policies are, where the services are, and what they can apply for and what they can't apply for and the criteria. So the social workers and the medical social workers can help us provide the more appropriate and the accurate information. I'm just saying that if there are organisations of people that are misleading the public, I hope they stop doing that. If they are unhappy with our policies, we are very happy to listen to them and for us to discuss and debate the policies but not to mislead older persons because my main fear is that you create a lot of anxiety among the older persons which is unnecessary. The whole policy of the Hong Kong Government is really to help older persons who have limited means. This is the objective. It is a matter of how we do it.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)

End/Saturday, March 1, 2003
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