NGO Calls For More Govt Support For The Jobless

The Hong Kong Council for Social Service is calling on the government to beef up its support for the unemployed, saying many of those now out of work were previously on middle incomes and this group does not get enough help under Hong Kong’s existing welfare system.

With the SAR's latest unemployment rate at a 16-year-high of 6.6 percent, there are about 246,000 people out of work.

The NGO analysed third quarter unemployment figures and found that around 92,500 families had fallen below the poverty line due to unemployment – meaning that they were earning less than 50 percent of the median monthly income for their family size.

The council said this showed that unemployment had directly brought around 40 percent of families, with at least one jobless member, into income poverty.

While the grassroots were among the most hard-hit by unemployment during the pandemic, many on middle incomes - such as construction workers, clerical workers and machine operators - had lost their jobs too, the council said.

The council added that, on average, it also took middle-income workers longer to return to the workforce. For example, the average unemployment duration for machine operators was 164 days, compared to 93 days for lower-skilled workers.

“The duration of their unemployment is much longer than we normally see. The drop of their household income is very dramatic,” Anthony Wong, the council's business director, said.

But he pointed out that only around five percent of the unemployed, or underemployed, had been on the government’s Comprehensive Social Security Assistance Scheme – a safety net for the city’s most needy, according to data from the second quarter last year.

He said the city’s current welfare system was not designed to help the unemployed, who he believed would need more targeted support, such as short-term unemployment cash allowances and further relaxation of the criteria for low-income families to get a monthly subsidy under the Working Family Allowance Scheme.

On Thursday, Labour and Welfare Secretary Law Chi-kwong announced a proposed relaxing the criteria for the Working Family Allowance Scheme, which would allow eligible non-single parent families to get a monthly subsidy if they work at least 72 hours a month, instead of the original 144 hours.

But the Council of Social Service said this would only help some underemployed people, not those who were struggling to find a job.

It urged the government to further relax the criteria for the scheme, so families working at least 36 hours a month would already be eligible.

The council also said families, who had received the allowance before December last year but were currently working less than 36 hours a month, should also be entitled to get a basic monthly subsidy under the scheme for six months.

In the longer term, it said the government should study the feasibility of setting up an unemployment insurance system.