SOCIAL WELFARE
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abundant manpower. Under-employment has reduced a pro- portion of the population to poverty and want. The major problem with which public assistance agencies, both official and unofficial, have to contend is the inadequate earnings of those who strive to maintain themselves by precarious and part-time work. Many of the under-employed are ill-housed, ill-fed and unable to obtain medical attention for themselves
and their families.
The services provided by the Relief Section of the Social Welfare Office consist of outdoor relief administered through six welfare centres in Hong Kong and Kowloon, and indoor relief in two relief camps at North Point and Morrison Hill. In addition to the distribution of free meals and dry rations, which in 1956 averaged 2,215 and 2,791 daily respectively, the six Social Welfare Office relief centres carry out a variety of other activities such as helping the unemployed to obtain work (a very difficult task) or assisting applicants to abtain hawker licences or free education for their children.
In addition to its regular free medical services to the public, the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals has continued to render a variety of other welfare services, such as the running of six free schools for the children of needy families, repatria- tion of destitutes to their native places and the issue of winter clothing to various fire victims and street sleepers.
Apart from the programme of official public assistance operated by the Social Welfare Office, the Family Welfare Society, which has five branches in Hong Kong and Kowloon, assists families through the payment of rent, school fees and loans or grants for the setting up of a hawker's business, and also by giving out cash relief and relief in kind.
The Catholic Welfare Committee of China, through about 100 centres in various parts of the Colony, the Lutheran World Federation, through its 32 centres, and the Church World Service give either constant or periodical help to