HONGKONG'S needy could be worse off under new arrangements for government handouts due to take effect on July 1, according to watchdog body the Hongkong Council of Social Service. The anomalies were pointed out yesterday when the council tried to explain how the new Comprehensive Social Security Assistance Scheme and the Social Security Allowance Scheme would work. Dr Raymond Ngan Man-hung, chairman of the council's committee on social security, said people between 60 and 69 were in one of the few categories where an across-the-board 15 per cent increase, promised by the Government, would be enjoyed. Their total payments would go from $1,350 to $1,550 a month. But this percentage dropped to 10 per cent for those aged 70 and above, with payments set to rise from $1,410 to $1,550. Disabled adults requiring constant attention would get only a five per cent rise from $2,700 to $2,835, while dependent disabled children fared even worse - their total payments rising from $2,925 to $3,055, or four per cent. Committee member Miss Rita Lam Yu-kiu said the new scheme offered no increases for recipients of special needs allowances. She said that in the case of a disabled child, the proposed disability allowance payment of $1,125 represented a decrease of $5. ''What the Government is doing is playing a calculation game,'' she said. ''As a client you are told you are going to get a 15 per cent increase and you think in terms of collecting at least another $300 plus. Just image what you will feel when you find out all you're going to get is $130.'' The Hongkong Council of Social Service is calling for the scrapping of the existing percentage deduction rule for all special and discretionary payments, designed to meet the needs of public assistance recipients. Under the existing scheme, clients must pay for some of their special needs with percentage deductions as high as 75 per cent. ''This really is ludicrous,'' Dr Ngan said. ''Seventy-five per cent is very self-defeating. Disabled and elderly people are given the special needs allowances because they need them in the first place. ''To turn around later and say we can make your life better but you will have to pay for it, makes no sense.'' For example, a Mr Chan, 55, of Shamshuipo turned down the ''offer'' of a special wheelchair because under the rules governing disability allowance payments he would have had to survive on $600 for the month. He is partially paralysed from a stroke and is receiving treatment for severe burns he suffered in a fire. He receives $825 in public assistance, an $825 disability allowance and a rent allowance of $655. He has a cubicle in a private tenement flat containing 12 cubicles. Mr Chan pays $1,200 for his cubicle, augmenting his rent allowance with money from his public assistance and disability payments, leaving him with under $1,200 for food, transport and other needs. Under the deduction rule governing allowances, he would have to pay more than a quarter of his allowances for the wheelchair. Mr Chan turned it down because he could not survive for one month on the $600 he would have been left with after his rent was paid. Mr Chan's medical problems mean he has to make eight trips a month to hospital for treatment, but he does not qualify for a transport allowance because he cannot prove his transport costs amount to more than half his disability allowance. He can go one of two ways: by taxi or ambulance. He finds taxis too expensive and ''non-priority, non-emergency'' ambulance trips involve on average seven hours per round trip.
