Elderly Services Strengthened

(To watch the 2020-21 Budget speech with sign language interpretation, click here.)

Financial Secretary Paul Chan today said the Government will continue to provide resources to strengthen services for the elderly.

Delivering his Budget speech at the Legislative Council, Mr Chan said the current-term Government is sparing no effort in enhancing social welfare services.

It will allocate $300 million to provide 3,000 additional home care service quotas for frail elderly people in the coming two years and issue an additional 1,000 community care service vouchers to seniors with moderate or severe impairment in the coming year.

The finance chief said he will assign $75 million to subsidise elderly service units for providing soft meals to seniors with swallowing difficulties.

Mr Chan also proposed to provide additional funding to Social Welfare Department-subvented non-governmental organisations operating day service units, involving an annual recurrent expenditure of about $46 million.

This will meet the electricity cost of having air conditioning for the units’ activity areas and is expected to benefit more than one million service users.