XN000022-1996-03-14 — Page 5

Family and community support for the elderly more important

The Secretary for Health and Welfare, Mrs Katherine Fok, today (Thursday) refuted suggestions that the Government had refrained from increasing the rate for the single elderly in the recent Review of the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) Scheme because of cost considerations.

"I shall state categorically that that is simply not true," she said.

"The Review made recommendations which were then costed. There was no question of a sum being made available and the recommendations being tailored to meet it."

Addressing the Rotary Club of Kingspark, Mrs Fok explained that to devise a methodology for checking the adequacy of the standard rates, the Government took the data from the Household Expenditure Survey (HES) and compared the CSSA standard rates with what people actually spend.

"We looked at the spending levels of people in the lowest five per cent to the lowest 20 per cent income groups. We also constructed basic needs budgets for each category of CSSA recipient - a time-consuming detailed exercise completely separate from the HES approach.

"The findings of the two approaches corroborated each other. Both told us the same thing the adult rates were very inadequate, the elderly in family rate was a little low, as was that for the 50 per cent disabled adult category.

"In all other cases, the standard rates were higher than the spending of persons in the lowest 20 per cent income group. In some cases, such as for the single elderly, the standard rate was significantly higher than the spending of the entire lowest 20 per cent income group. As a result of these findings, we proposed major increases for the adult standard rates," she explained.

However, Mrs Fok told the Rotarians that the Review had sought to address the social security needs of the elderly in many other ways.

For example, the Government proposed to introduce a new option for elderly CSSA recipients to retire to Guangdong while continuing to receive their standard and long term supplement payments which amount to $1,935 per month and $1,435 year respectively as from April.

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