Opinion | Hong Kong’s first Covid-19 lockdowns reveal the appalling poverty in our midst

Name: Hong Kong ends second lockdown in Yau Ma Tei, finds one Covid-19 case
Uploaded: 2021-02-01T00:45:07.000Z
Duration: 1 min 43 s
Description: Hong Kong ends second lockdown in Yau Ma Tei, finds one Covid-19 case

Hong Kong’s targeted lockdowns have brought to light neglected pockets where the poor suffer inhumane living conditions, and we must not look away. It is because of our collective nonchalance that the city has become increasingly unliveable

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The Yau Tsim Mong lockdown should make clear that those who are most economically vulnerable in our community have been reduced to living in homes that put their health and safety at risk. Photo: Sam Tsang

Alice Wu

Published: 8:45am, 1 Feb 2021Updated: 8:47am, 1 Feb 2021

Covid-19 has not only exposed Hong Kong’s wealth inequality, the first lockdowns have also made clear some very disturbing truths.

Perhaps we have heard too much about our notorious wealth gap, or maybe we have secretly given up hope of tackling it, after years of talk failed to yield real results. Whatever the reason, the images of one of this city’s poorest neighbourhoods on lockdown should haunt us: the cordons around blocks of tenement houses, old and ill-maintained buildings, and subdivided flats – home to the city’s most vulnerable.

The most drastic measure taken by the government so far was prompted by infection numbers that would not ebb. The possibility that environmental factors, like poor plumbing systems, may have contributed to virus transmission must serve as a wake-up call.

We are talking about how increasingly unliveable the city has become. And no, the old way of attributing the problem to runaway home prices isn’t going to cut it (though, yes, that is a huge part of the problem). The factors are as intricately intertwined as the consequences are clear.

Those who are most economically vulnerable in our community have been reduced to living in homes that put their health and safety at risk. The pandemic has made this crystal clear. Beneath Hong Kong’s glitz and flashy neon lights are neglected pockets of packed neighbourhoods with bad hygiene, almost non-existent building management, and inhumane and unsafe living conditions.

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Hong Kong ends second lockdown in Yau Ma Tei, finds one Covid-19 case

So we need to stop averting our gaze from the plight of the underprivileged – between decades of government inaction and our collective nonchalance, life has become unnecessarily dog-eat-dog Hobbesian for the most vulnerable. And that’s on all of us; people going from one outrage to the next, instead of doing the hard work of taking action and seeing it through.

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