Matthew Cheung: It's 'difficult' to say how long elderly must wait for aged-care homes

Lawmakers pressed the government yesterday to indicate how long elderly Hongkongers must wait for aged-care homes after the Audit Commission found that 5,700 people died last year as they waited for a place.

But Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said it "would be difficult" for the government to provide any such timeframe given the complexity of the situation.

"We have considered this suggestion internally," Cheung told the Legislative Council's Public Accounts Committee yesterday. "But it's difficult for us to set a rigid timeframe on the waiting list for elderly-care homes."

The meeting was held to follow up on a damning report by the Audit Commission last month, which found the number of elderly people who die while waiting for places has shot up in the past four years. Some 5,700 people died last year while waiting to enter care homes, up from the average of 4,000 to 4,500 annual deaths reported before 2010.

Many elderly people refused to go into private care homes or government-bought spaces in private homes because of quality control issues.

The report recommended a review of the government's assessment system and full disclosure of its methodology and urged the government to provide more subsidised places to meet rising demand given the rapidly ageing population. It also showed that the Social Welfare Department had been watering down its statistics to downplay the severity of the space shortage.