Policy address: CY Leung abolishes controversial ‘bad son statement’ and announces means-tested pensions
In his final policy address the chief executive said revised plan for Old Age Living Allowance will benefit 500,000 senior residents
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying surprised Hongkongers on Wednesday by scrapping the long-denounced “bad son statement” which had required children of elderly welfare applicants to declare they would not support their parents – a practice that has driven away eligible claimants.
The administration also ended a heated decade-long debate on pensions by introducing a means-tested scheme, claiming it would benefit 74 per cent of the city’s senior residents, alongside other allowances, even though the pension itself was not universal in nature.
“It is useful for us to take a comprehensive view on all the support measures that we have in place for the elderly and not just one of the pillars,” Leung said on Wednesday, adding he had never supported the universal pension scheme, even in his election campaign.
In his swansong policy address, Leung introduced a number of new measures on social welfare which would involve an extra annual recurrent expenditure of over HK$9 billion on average in the coming decade.
The most welcomed policy was the abolishment of the so-called “bad son statement”, a contentious practice which had remained since 1999 despite countless criticisms from advocacy groups.
Elderly applicants of the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA), in a few months time, will only need to declare they were not taken care of by their children, without having their family members need to make that black-and-white “inhuman” statement, which many were reluctant to sign.