Letters | Allowing prisoners to call loved ones during ban on visits is essential for their well-being

Readers urge prisons to give inmates more opportunities to remotely contact family and friends, call for anti-Covid measures to focus less on asymptomatic cases, and suggest that rental deferment won’t help small businesses in the long run

Coronavirus Hong Kong

Letters

Published: 11:30am, 24 Mar 2022

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Before the Covid-19 pandemic, remand prisoners in Hong Kong were allowed to receive one visit per day and convicted prisoners could receive visits twice a month. Foreign prisoners whose families lived overseas could phone them for up to 10 minutes once a month.

Maintaining such social connections is essential for the rehabilitation and well-being of prisoners. They are especially important for non-local prisoners, as it usually takes a month or longer for them to reach family members via snail mail.

Amid the fifth wave, the Correctional Services Department banned all social visits to prisons starting on February 5 and only announced on March 18 that it would resume them by phases. In addition to locking prisoners in their cells 24/7, the department also suspended all phone calls to curb the growing number of infections in the prisons.

We urge the government to allow prisoners who have tested negative for Covid-19 or have recovered from infection to take phone calls so they can reconnect with their families and friends, or liaise with advisers and consulates, as soon as possible.

Virtual visits via video are an important alternative for family and friends who cannot not visit loved ones in prison physically. At present, prisoners must apply for such calls, which their family members can only conduct at a counselling office in Mong Kok. This option is only available for relatives and friends who have difficulty visiting prisons due to age, pregnancy or disability.

Given the limited opportunities for physical visits during the pandemic, we urge the government to extend the virtual visit option to all prisoners’ friends and relatives, and to permit such calls to take place more frequently. As there are limited video conferencing machines available at the Mong Kok office, the department should consider adding a video call function to its mobile app so that virtual visits can be conducted from home – both a safer and more convenient option.

Emily Ma, Sha Tin, and Simon Wang, Kowloon Tong

Why the half-hearted shift in Covid-19 priorities?

Finally, the Hong Kong government has – despite the chief executive’s denial – ditched its zero-Covid policy to join the rest of the world in living with the virus by announcing that visitors from nine previously-banned countries may now fly to Hong Kong and will be subject to only seven days of quarantine.

Still, those seven days should be reduced to zero, given that there is now insufficient space even for locally-infected residents to be quarantined. It makes no sense for a healthy visitor to be isolated.

The problem with the administration is that it has still not yet recognised this new reality: the Omicron variant will infect everybody eventually, so the government should no longer focus solely on case numbers. Rather, it should shift attention to the availability of ICU beds and make sure that the speed at which the virus spreads does not exceed hospital capacity. Mask-wearing, social distancing and quarantine are means to slow down the virus, and should be applied accordingly. Meanwhile, hospital capacity should be increased.

Singapore, Australia and many other countries have already proven this methodology works. It’s not too late for Hong Kong to change course to adopt this herd immunity approach. We will be the first Chinese city to open to the world, to be followed by others in mainland China.

That is an unstoppable reality for both scientific and economic reasons. After all, Covid-19 is just like a flu – as long as you are vaccinated.

Kwok Hung, Admiralty

Rent deferment hardly a mercy for pandemic-hit SMEs

Jack Yu was too quick to praise the government’s proposal to allow small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to postpone their rent payments (“Rent deferment is last hope for Hong Kong’s battered small businesses”, March 18). Such a measure is not as helpful as a waiver. How are owners of businesses that have been severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic expected to find the cash to pay their rent when it is due three months later?

High property and rental prices have been the root of Hong Kong’s problems for a long time. Any economic rebound is less important than a land and housing shake-up, which would help Hong Kong build a new foundation for a post-pandemic economy.

Edmond Pang, Fanling