Priorities for the poor a mess, say lawmakers
Priorities for building recreation facilities were a mess, the government was told yesterday amid calls for a better deal for violence-plagued Tin Shui Wai and other low-income areas.
Independent legislative councillor Albert Chan Wai-yip said the Leisure and Cultural Services Department was ready to spend $60 million on flower beds while Tin Shui Wai, with poor families, did not have enough playgrounds.
Welfare sector legislator Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung said priority also needed to be given to areas such as Shamshuipo, where a woman and her two daughters were stabbed to death last year.
They were speaking at a meeting of a welfare panel subcommittee during talks on a paper on the need to provide welfare services and facilities in areas where poverty makes families more prone to violence.
Mr Chan said he had written to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department recently to question its resource allocations.
In Tin Shui Wai, he said departments should present an overall budget to the Yuen Long District Council to avoid piecemeal action.
'Many of the government departments have still not woken up. The leisure and cultural department's prioritisations are a mess,' he said. 'It's a shame that communities in Tin Shui Wai seem to be waging a war with each other in order to apply for the use of a town hall.
'The elderly there are wandering on the street and the children are playing all over the place and there is also a triad problem.'
The Education and Manpower Bureau had also refused requests to encourage schools to lend their halls for the community's use.
Unionist legislator Chan Yuen-han, who chaired the subcommittee, asked Director of Social Welfare Paul Tang Kwok-wai if authorities should pay more attention to other districts to better monitor family violence cases.
Mr Tang gave no direct answer.
Dr Cheung said Shamshuipo also needed more facilities and services.
Last April a woman and her daughters were killed in their Shamshuipo home after returning from a shelter for battered women. Earlier at the shelter, her husband demanded to see her.
Friends urged her to ask police for help, which she did, but officers decided she was not in immediate danger and she went home without a police escort.
