Candy Leung Ching-yee, 29, is an inspector at the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority. She investigates complaints, usually about employers failing to pay their share of the MPF fund. She is a recipient of this year's Ombudsman Awards for Officers of Public Organisations, which honours public officers for their display of fairness, impartiality and efficiency in the performance of their duties.
When I was at school I was involved in the church and did community service work. A lot of the time I worked with old people and saw that the problems they face were quite serious.
An incident with one old woman really drove this point home. She came into the bank where I used to work in tears, saying she had lost her chop with her signature engraved on it. It was a big setback for her. Not only did she not have the money to replace it, she believed that without it she could not get access to her money.
After talking to her some more, we found out the old woman worked as a rubbish collector and lived a very hard life. We asked her why she didn't apply for social security and she said she wanted to rely on herself.
She had worked as a domestic servant for many years but now had no family or friends left. I took her back to her house and saw that she got by on salted fish or leftovers most of the time. In the end we not only got her access to her bank account but gave her a new chop.
When later on I had to sell MPF schemes at the bank I recalled that old woman and it made me realise that the MPF does help many old people. With MPF, at least when they're 60 or 65 years old, they'll have some money that they have earned themselves. So I guess I did feel a sense of mission when I decided to switch to this job.
I'm really glad that I got to work on the frontline at the MPF Authority. In the beginning I thought it would be mostly investigation work but once I got in contact with complainants and employers I realised it was really more of a social programme.
