IT takes a special touch to turn a new pension scheme into a controversial issue that has only succeeded in uniting people in opposition to it. Such a scheme is decades overdue in Hong Kong, but the Old Age Pension Scheme is drawing increasing fire, and the Government, rather than bunkering down, should turn a sympathetic ear to its critics: seeking to improve the plan while drawing lessons that will help avoid such controversies in future.
The pension plan would have drawn criticism, however it was constituted. The so-called business community has, over the years, paid scant attention to the needs of employees, and the business lobby will find few takers if it suggests its opposition to the plan is based on practicality and need, rather than ideology and greed. Nonetheless, the Government should listen.
More important, the Government should have paid greater attention to China's views. Because of the way in which Governor Chris Patten pushed through his limited political reforms, Beijing now tends to smell a rat any time an initiative comes its way from Hong Kong, and China exercises its olfactory organs to determine the presence of such a rodent, whether or not it is present. If the Hong Kong Government had been more sensitive to the fact that China is already agonising over the weight of its own welfare burden, then officials might have done more homework to persuade Beijing that the proposed pension scheme is really self-financed.
The scheme would also have appeared less suspicious if the Government had been more forthright about it in the first place. To pick a single example, anyone can work out that a foreign domestic helper - forced to participate in the scheme - would have almost no chance of picking up the pension, and the Government's insistence that this is not the case invites critical scrutiny of its other claims. Hong Kong people deserve a good pension scheme, and they want one that works. The pension plan might have offered an opportunity to overcome the distrust that exists between the Hong Kong Government and China. Instead, it's beginning to look as if it might end up as another own goal. The Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower, Lam Woon-kwong, pledged the Government would be flexible when finalising the proposed scheme in order to secure the broadest support from the community and China. Hong Kong people probably will believe it when they see it.
