- 18-
ว
/a
28.
An allowance would be payable to those who have
been resident in Hong Kong for 5 years and due to illness
(physical or mental), injury or disability have been incapable
of work for the previous 18 months and who are medically
certified as being incapable of work for least the next 6
months. To the extent that a separate name was needed, it
would be called an incapacity allowance (in Chinese
The allowance would not be payable to those receiving an old
age (infirmity) allowance or disability allowance, since to do
so would duplicate social security provision. The amount
would be half the disability allowance: at the present time,
this would be $90. On the basis that there is an initial
take-up rate of only 25%, the estimated initial annual net
cost of the allowance is $8M, allowing for $2M savings on
public assistance. But the eventual take-up rate is likely
to reach that of the old age (infirmity) allowance scheme
(73.4%), in which case the net annual expenditure would reach.
$28M plus administrative on-cost of 5%, making say $30M in
all. (The administrative costs also allow for costs to the
Medical and Health Department as they have no spare resources).
No further extensions to scheme
29.
Honourable Members will wish to know that considera-.
non-means -
tion was given to the possibility of extending the excit Tested soourity (disability and infirmity allounce-scheme to include
widowed mothers with young children, which was mentioned in
the White Paper "Social Welfare in Hong Kong: The Way Ahead".
However, the great majority of those consulted in the course
of the social welfare review considered that it was not
necessary to do so; and that adequate help was available
through the public assistance scheme, especially if this were
amended (as is proposed in paragraph 18 above) to enable/widow
a