Welfare scapegoats
If Hong Kong had a problem of dependency culture, with the bulk of welfare benefits going to people who would rather live on handouts than work, there would be every justification to cut down on welfare. But there is little evidence for this.
Instead, the year has been punctuated by the suicides of unemployed workers too ashamed to admit their plight. Joblessness remains a stigma, even if it is as a direct result of regional economic turmoil.
What then is the justification for seeking to cut payments to single parents and larger families who qualify for more than $12,000 a month? It is important to remember that only 11 per cent of the welfare budget goes to the unemployed and only some 9.6 per cent goes to single parents.
Welfare benefits are meant to provide a safety net for the needy and obviously it is wrong to give people more money than they previously earned by working. And it is true that larger families face only marginally higher expenses in items such as gas or electricity.
But many single parents are fathers caring for mainland children, most of whom are sent here for schooling before they reach five years old, and need constant care.
When the economy picks up, the Government must keep up pressure for priority entry for mothers. That would give children a proper home life, plus an opportunity for fathers to be breadwinners.
People on social security are always a convenient target on which the public can work out their anxieties. But there is no doubt that larger economies could be asked from those at the other end of the economic scale.
Certainly, welfare cheats do exist, but they tend to be found in subsidised housing, running private companies, with a Mercedes in the parking lot and luxury property rented out elsewhere.
Over half the $13 billion welfare budget goes to the elderly, and anyone who thinks that they too are over-indulged, should take a look in the streets and ask why they see so many old people pushing handcarts round, picking up cardboard.
This is a problem which the Government is only just beginning to get to grips with. And yet the problem of economic support for the aged in an advanced society is by far the most urgent welfare issue.
