Matthew Cheung Defends Govt's Anti-poverty Measures

Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung on Sunday defended the government's efforts at alleviating poverty in the city – after the latest official figures showed more than a fifth of the population was living below the poverty line.

The administration's latest poverty report says 21.4 percent of the city's population was considered poor in 2019 – up one percentage point from the previous year, and exceeding the previous record of 20.6 percent set a decade earlier.

But in his weekly blog, Cheung pointed out that the actual number of people living below the poverty line could be significantly lower once the government's recurrent measures to help the poor are taken into account.

He said that if recurrent measures are factored in, the poverty rate would drop to 15.8 percent, adding that it would go down to as low as 9.2 percent if non-recurrent measures, like health care vouchers and transport concessions, are also considered.

Cheung urged people to better understand the government's efforts to "comprehensively" alleviate poverty.

Labour and welfare chief Law Chi-kwong, meanwhile, said his bureau is committed to implementing more measures to aid the poor.

Looking ahead, Law said he will follow up on the draft legislation on scrapping the MPF offsetting mechanism to stop employers from dipping into workers' pension funds for severance and long-service payments.

He added that he will also work on expanding an existing scheme that allows elderly people to travel on public transport for HK$2 per trip, and gradually increase the number of statutory holidays from the current 12 days to 17 days.