Win-win result pledged for evicted elderly

Welfare minister Matthew Cheung Kin-chung pledged yesterday that he would exhaust all possible options to come up with a win-win solution before more than 1,000 elderly people were displaced by a proposed new town development in Kwu Tung.

"There are still four years to go … there's room for us to talk with the Development Bureau and come up with a win-win proposal. Please allow us some room and time," Cheung said after meeting residents and managers of the 25 homes in Dills Corner Garden, Kwu Tung, near the Hong Kong Golf Club at Fanling.

But 78-year-old Jennifer Wang Yuzhen said that did not ease their fears and worries. "It's your task and your duty to take care of us …We could be gone in less than four years' time," she told the minister.

The reported yesterday that the Development Bureau had increased space for community facilities in the new town, raising the possibility of moving the displaced elderly to a nearby site.

Under an existing plan, the residents would simply be scattered to other homes for the elderly in the city.

Lawmaker Fernando Cheung has also proposed allocating the elderly to a new nursing facility in Tuen Mun, which will be the largest in the city when it is completed by the end of 2017. His idea was welcomed by developer Henderson Land, who donated the site, and the home's future operator Pok Oi Hospital.

The operators of the homes at Dills Corner, most of which are privately run, have suggested redeveloping the homes in the new town but concentrating them into taller buildings on a smaller site to minimise their impact on the future development.