Community Care Fund at one: first-round measures reach 300,000 people (2011)

As of October 2011, the one-year-old Community Care Fund had rolled out its first round of 10 anti-poverty measures costing HK$730 million and reaching about 300,000 people. The measures subsidised overseas study tours for needy students, paid language-exam fees for ethnic minorities, and provided care allowances for the severely disabled, alongside support for low-income patients, the elderly, new immigrants and CSSA recipients.

What was the controversy?

The fund was created to catch people falling through the welfare net, yet its first round missed the “N-nothings” — people living in subdivided flats who receive no CSSA. A second round was under study, including relocation allowances for subdivided-flat households affected by industrial-building and private-flat clearance, and a six-month HK$1,000-a-month rent subsidy for non-CSSA elderly people living alone or in elderly couples in private housing, expected to benefit about 6,000 people.

Where did the HK$6,000 handout money come from?

Separately, the fund paid HK$6,000 to about 230,000 new arrivals, costing HK$1.5 billion. A Home Affairs Bureau spokesman clarified the money did not come from the government’s original HK$5 billion allocation but from a separate application to LegCo’s Finance Committee. Remaining items would be rolled out in the coming months, the bureau said.

The data dispute

The fund’s welfare subcommittee had asked the Housing Department for public-housing waiting-list figures to help the “N-nothings”, but the numbers still needed Housing Authority approval before release. The subcommittee’s chairman publicly criticised the government for dragging its feet.