XN000022-1996-04-03 — Page 32

16

To help CSSA recipients rejoin the workforce, the Employee's Retraining Board has agreed to give priority access to retraining courses for single parents on CSSA.

Portability

It is always pleasing when a Government initiative is welcomed, as happened with our proposal to allow elderly people to retire to China and receive CSSA payments while there. We are still working out the details but aim to have the Scheme up and running within twelve months.

Old Age Allowance

Some Members suggested that these new arrangements should also apply to the Old Age Allowance (OAA) and that the Allowance itself should also be reviewed. On the first suggestion, I think we can all appreciate that sending monthly payments to recipients in China presents some particular administrative challenges. I should like to proceed cautiously on this front and ensure that we succeed in addressing those challenges in the system we propose for the CSSA before considering if a case exists to extend it to the OAA. On the second, in contrast to CSSA, the OAA is not based on need. Neither is it contributory. Any increases, therefore, would be costly to fund. In the use of scarce public funds, I believe we must focus our efforts and resources on targetting improvements to help those in need.

Social and Recreational Grant for the Elderly

I note that our intention to introduce a new social and recreational grant for the elderly has also been welcomed, but concern has been expressed about our proposal to grant it on a reimbursement basis. Let me explain the background to this proposal. Our intention was to use the grant to supplement our other efforts to improve support through social networking for elderly persons living alone. We wanted pro-actively to encourage the elderly to join in with group recreational and social activities. In so doing they would benefit from a wider network of community support. The grant would have much less welfare value if spent on other things involving no community involvement. But we have now accepted that there is a need to balance the desirability of achieving this goal against the practical arrangements involved. We are, therefore. working on a much simplified system for payment of this grant to minimize the burden both on those claiming it as well as on those who are to process it.