XN000022-1995-02-14 — Page 13

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I talked earlier about areas of social policy where we needed to do better and I think that most of you are aware that one such area about which I feel strongly is in the provision of services and financial support for the elderly. You described, very eloquently, the responsibilities which the community should discharge towards its elderly who have helped to create today's prosperity in Hong Kong. The matter is both one of services and one of financial support.

Services, we established under Libby Wong when she was Secretary for Health and Welfare a working party on services for the elderly. It made a large number of recommendations, it reported last August, and we've undertaken to implement all its recommendations in health and welfare fields so that the provision for the elderly is improved.

But there is also the question of financial care. A question which the community has been debating in one way or another for about thirty years. We debated it a good deal in Government and we came to the conclusion that the right way, the best way forward was to introduce an old age pension scheme for Hong Kong, paid for by direct though limited contributions from employers and employees. We put that idea in a consultation document, it was debated in the Legislative Council and it was debated in the wider community. I wish some of those who have been out and about in the last week or so with petitions and making encouraging and supportive remarks about the pension scheme had been around during the months when it was being slagged off by virtually every newspaper in Hong Kong by most of the Legislative Council and by all the chambers of commerce, plus one or two officials from China as well.

I don't need any convincing about the merits of the pension scheme but there are a lot of other people in Hong Kong who apparently do. We've been discussing the way forward, the best way forward with legislators, with chambers of commerce and with others over the last couple of weeks because I do still want to find a consensus for a way of providing better for the elderly in their old age.

Now you may well be right that CSSA's should make a contribution to that. I'll only make this point about CSSA's. As I said earlier, since I came to Hong Kong, since the Summer of 1992, we've increased benefits for single people by 70% in cash terms and by 38% in real terms. Some people accuse me of being a socialist for having done that. It means for the elderly that the average payment of benefit under CSSA's is $2,490. You may be interested in this, it's above the level of $2,300, the average payment is $2,490. So if we were only to take $2,300 as the guide, then I'm not sure it would actually meet the needs of a lot of people who are getting more among the retired in the community. That figure of $2,490 will be increased by about a couple of hundred dollars after April.