The government's rule requiring those seeking welfare benefits to live in Hong Kong 309 days a year was recently struck down by the High Court. This has led to a chain reaction. Now an elderly person has sought legal aid to challenge a similar requirement for the old age allowance, more popularly known as 'fruit money'. The government looks set to suffer another humiliating judicial defeat.
Officials are no doubt smarting from this legal slap in the face. But it seems to me that if the residency requirement is thrown out for Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA), or welfare, it follows logically that a similar requirement for fruit money should be cast out, too. It is time for officials to lay the residency requirement to rest, once and for all.
There is a wider issue at stake. Nursing homes in Hong Kong are overcrowded and under-serviced. Things will only get worse in our rapidly ageing society. In the coming years, close to 400,000 residents will be going into retirement. Think of what this means for demand for nursing home placements. By some estimates, more than 40,000 elderly Hongkongers are currently shuttling back and forth between the mainland and the city just to satisfy the government's eligibility rules for CSSA and the old age allowance. If the residency obstacles were removed, these tired old souls would be spared the needless shuttle.
You must remember that the cost of living is high in Hong Kong and low on the mainland. Armed with their several thousand welfare dollars, Hong Kong retirees requiring just normal medical attention can live fairly comfortably across the border - provided the residency requirement is removed, along with that for fruit money. The government says it intends to appeal over the unfavourable decision. But I am afraid our officials are completely misreading the entire situation.
The interesting thing is that the government has already in place a scheme to encourage the elderly to resettle in Fujian and Guangdong without losing their CSSA benefits. But this scheme comes with such harsh conditions - such as forfeiting Hong Kong medical and housing benefits - that there have been few takers. This is another example of the government being lost in the details of its programmes without any awareness of their larger, unintended consequences.
Relaxing the residency requirements will relieve the pressure on nursing home placements, as I have noted. It may even have a positive impact on the quality of service in local homes for the aged. Because nursing home fees are capped by CSSA rates, the owners and operators of homes have their hands tied when they want to improve the quality of service for residents. As rents and wages go up, they have difficulty recruiting qualified personnel to fill what are deeply disagreeable jobs.
Underpaid and overstressed, nursing home assistants have been known to vent their frustrations on their wards. If there is a northward exodus of relatively healthy retirees, the pressure will ease up on local nursing homes. That would free them up to focus on improving their service to the truly needy, especially if the government sees fit to stop linking nursing home fees to the scale of CSSA payments.
