Press Releases

Government is committed to helping the disadvantaged

The Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, today (November 18) reaffirmed the Government's commitment to a system that looks after the physical and psychosocial well-being of the elderly, the infirm and the disabled.

He also stressed the Government's role to assist the disadvantaged, the poor and the unemployed with the objective of enhancing, not impeding, their will to be self-reliant.

Dr Yeoh visited the Sam Hong Support Centre and the Retraining Centre operated by the Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood (ADPL) in Cheung Sha Wan, one of the Intensive Employment Assistance Fund Projects funded by Social Welfare Department to help unemployed CSSA recipients to move towards self-reliance.

Dr Yeoh also met with Mr Frederick Fung and other ADPL representatives to exchange views on medical and social welfare issues.

He rejected claims that the medical fee restructuring exercise and the CSSA review currently underway aimed at cutting welfare benefits of the poor and the elderly due to the budget deficit.

"On the contrary, we want to better target government health care subsidies at the lower-income, chronic patients and elders with limited means," Dr Yeoh said.

"The medical fee restructuring is one of the strategic initiatives to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of our public health care system.

"The modest fee increase is necessary in order to better target our finite resources at the needy and at services which pose high financial risk to patients, thereby achieving better efficiency and equity.

"We will strengthen and enhance the existing medical fee assistance scheme to assist the lower-income group, elderly with limited means and chronic patients when the medical fee restructuring is implemented," he said.

On the review of CSSA, Dr Yeoh noted that the CSSA standard payment rates had remained frozen since 1999, despite the continuous deflation.

"There is scope for a downward adjustment of the payment rates by 11.1 per cent as measured by the Social Security Assistance Index of Prices, without affecting the originally intended buying power and the associated quality of life. To sustain the CSSA safety net, we have to ensure our existing resources go further to meet the increasing demand," he said.

"For those CSSA recipients who are able to work, the CSSA system is meant to provide short-term assistance to tide them over the difficulties.

"We will ensure that a system is in place to assist them to be self-reliance and move off the safety net as early as possible," Dr Yeoh said.

The CSSA expenditure accounts for some 7.8 per cent of Government recurrent expenditure. As at October 2002, the year-on-year growth in overall CSSA caseload was 11 per cent while that in unemployment caseload was about 48 per cent.

Based on this trend, the approved provision for CSSA in 2002-03 of $16 billion, which already contains a growth of 11.1 per cent over the actual expenditure of $14.4 billion in 2001-02, will not be enough to meet with the increasing demand, and the estimated requirement for 2003-04 would be well in excess of $18 billion.

Monday, November 18, 2002