Information on welfare plans
IT may soon be possible to check where facilities for the mentally ill or handicapped are to be built.
Assistant Director of Social Welfare, Mr Anthony Chan Wai-kwan, told legislators on the welfare panel yesterday that the Government was considering making such information available at district offices for those in private housing.
Leaflets would be distributed to tenants of public housing estates.
In response to United Democrats legislator Mr Cheung Man-kwong, Mr Chan said the Government had consulted residents in areas where such welfare facilities were to be built over the next two years.
Signboards or banners would be erected at sites where these facilities were built, he added.
He pledged to start the consultation on the building programme for 1996-97 as soon as the Government knew the kinds of services the new centres would provide.
Calls for public consultation began when residents of Tung Tau Estate and Laguna City staged mass demonstrations to protest against the building of a day centre for the ex-mental patients and a hostel for the mentally handicapped in their neighbourhood.
