JOBLESS people in public housing should not have to pay rent, and the unemployment emergency relief fund should be reintroduced, unionists said yesterday.
In a 10-point manifesto aimed at relieving what they said were social problems 'spreading like a disease', the Federation of Trade Unions accused the Government of lacking a strategy to deal with unemployment.
'The government departments, for example the Social Welfare Department, the Housing Authority and the Labour Department, do not see unemployment and under-employment as a whole issue,' vice-chairman Chan Yuen-han said.
'They just deal with it piece by piece.' She said unemployed people were often forced to resort to desperate means to survive, because welfare policy provided assistance to only a few.
According to the Government, there were about 3,700 applications for assistance from the unemployed in the past financial year under the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance Scheme, representing 7.4 per cent of all applications.
The unionists said the scheme made it too difficult to claim help.
