New hope for Kwu Tung elderly people set to lose homes for new town
More than 1,000 residents of Kwu Tung nursing homes will have to move, but new proposals could help them keep their community together
More than a thousand elderly people set to be displaced by a new-town development in Kwu Tung have been given renewed hope that they can continue to live together with the nursing home friends many now consider their family.
Two new relocation options have emerged for the 1,300 elderly people living in 16 nursing homes in Dills Corner Garden in Kwu Tung, Sheung Shui. They could be moved to a government site within the new town, or to a planned nursing home project in Tuen Mun on land donated by tycoon Lee Shau-kee.
Welfare minister Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, who will visit those affected today, will have the final say over their fate.
The options were made possible by changes to plans for the new town and - in the case of the Tuen Mun project - an idea floated by lawmaker Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung in the Post.
The existing plan would scatter the residents to different nursing homes, while compensation would be offered only to those now receiving government subsidies - about a third of the 1,300.
"We would rather stay together until the end of our lives," said 68-year-old Quincy Wong Wing-kin, who has lived in a home without government aid for six years and would consider moving with his "home-mates" to Tuen Mun. "The poorest people in the world are the lonely ones."
Close to one-third of the residents have lived in the serene area for more than ten years; the eldest is now aged 106. Both the Welfare Bureau and the Development Bureau have been reluctant to pledge to resettle the whole community in the same district.