MTR fare rises should be next on Carrie Lam’s agenda

Alice Wu says now the Hong Kong government appears to be making progress on its promise to scrap the MPF offset mechanism that’s unfair to employees, why not also take the MTR to task for its unfair fare scheme?

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A signal failure on the MTR’s East Rail Line disrupted services for two hours in January. It’s fair to say that the MTR’s service performance should be a factor in how the company sets its fares. Photo: Edmond So

Published: 9:31am, 1 Apr 2018Updated: 6:31pm, 1 Apr 2018

Is Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor willing to move mountains for Hongkongers? Back in 2016, when she was chief secretary, Lam seemed ready to do just that. Behind closed doors with some lawmakers, she volunteered that the government aimed to conquer “three mountains”, or the three knotty problems Hong Kong should resolve. These are the management of public housing malls by the Link Reit, the offsetting mechanism of the Mandatory Provident Fund, and repeated MTR fare increases.

Today, as Lam enters the ninth month of her first year as Hong Kong’s chief executive, these monsters remain.

Just last week, Lam hinted that she was making some headway on one of them – the MPF offset scheme. Talks on scrapping the MPF offset mechanism, which allows employers to dip into workers’ pension funds for severance and long-service payments (the rawest deal ever for workers), have gone on for years. In his budget in February, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po announced that the government would commit HK$15 billion (US$1.9 billion) to scrapping it. The welfare chief Dr Law Chi-kwong followed up with saying that it would cost more.

The reason this offset scheme, which is basically sanctioned stealing from workers, has to go cannot be simpler. It was the opium the Tung Chee-hwa administration fed employers to get them on board with the MPF, and now Lam is left with no choice but to use public money to feed their greed.

Lam is correct to say that the scheme undermines “the very purpose of setting up” retirement protection for employees in the first place. The government has a moral obligation to right this wrong.

In a private meeting with lawmakers in 2016, Carrie Lam, then Hong Kong’s chief secretary, said the government aimed to tackle three so-called “mountains”, or issues affecting people’s livelihoods that have proved difficult to resolve. Photo: Edward Wong

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