The Social
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Misapprehensions of subvention review clarified
Welfare Department's subvention for
for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating 2,488 service units in 1996-97 is nearly $4 billion.
This was stated by the Director of Social Welfare, Mr Ian Strachan, when he addressed the luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club of Kingspark Hong Kong today (Thursday).
Mr Strachan said the department had commissioned a consultancy firm to review the social welfare subvention system with an objective to improve the current system so that the department and NGOs could work in partnership to provide more efficient, customer oriented and output-driven services.
He said the consultants had so far released two reports and held various workshops, seminars and briefings with the SWD and NGOs.
"For collection of views from the sector, I also issued a questionnaire to all chairpersons/agency heads of subvented NGOs to seek their views on the proposals and have specifically asked them to incorporate in the completed questionnaire views of their staff, their boards and their senior management," Mr Strachan said.
"Judging from the initial response, it can be said that the sector generally supports in principle the series of measures aimed at improving the way in which SWD assesses the quality and quantity of the services delivered by NGOs though there are concerns on the need for additional manpower and technological support for implementing and monitoring these standards."
Mr Strachan took the opportunity to clarify nine of some common misapprehensions by the welfare sector:
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Subvention provision will be cut in the name of service improvement and there will not be enough to maintain the civil service pay rates.
Maintaining that the review was not a cost cutting exercise, Mr Strachan said the total cost of social welfare subvention under the new system would be no more nor no less than it was under the current system.
There would be adequate provision for most NGOs to meet their necessary operation costs including payment of salary to their staff at civil service rates, he said.
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