Govt, local party join to improve people's lives

Chief Secretary for Administration Matthew Cheung Kin-chung says livelihood problems in Hong Kong are expected to improve in 2020 and the government intends to address these more comprehensively.

In his blog published on Sunday, Cheung said the special administrative region government has now obtained enough land to provide a total of 10,000 more transitional housing units in the next three years — a goal set in the 2019 Policy Address.

He attributed this breakthrough to collaboration between the government, the business sector and also ordinary residents. All three parties were working together to resolve the city's acute housing issue and land shortage, Cheung wrote.

Recently, several major property developers in Hong Kong announced they would offer parcels of land to the government or non-governmental organizations with low rents for the construction of transitional housing units.

The latest company to do this is Sun Hung Kai Properties — Hong Kong's biggest developer by market value. It has offered three plots of farmland in the New Territories to build these transitional homes.

Another important livelihood issue concerning people in the SAR is the maternity leave extension bill. This was held up in the Legislative Council last week after a motion to move the reading of the bill to the LegCo manpower panel failed to pass before the meeting was adjourned on Thursday.

Writing in his blog on Sunday, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong explained that the motion was made because the government was anxious to get the bill passed before the LegCo session ends in July. The bill aims to extend maternity leave in the city from 10 to 14 weeks later in the year.

Meanwhile, Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee said the government had responded to the public's concerns about the peak influenza season and the spread of pneumonia-like disease first reported in Wuhan. Chan said the Hospital Authority has allocated over HK$700 million($90 million) to public hospitals. Additional services will include over 900 new beds, she noted.

In other developments on Sunday, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong - the city's largest political party in the legislature — launched its "All Service Day" plan. This aims to fulfill an earlier promise to help, serve and communicate with all Hong Kong residents despite the DAB losing a number of seats in the District Council election last November.

As part of this commitment, members and volunteers of the DAB handed out free Spring Festival information to residents in 18 districts across the city. They will also provide residents with leaflets explaining how to prevent infectious diseases and what people should do if they suffer from influenza.

Addressing a launch ceremony of the one-day event, DAB chairwoman Starry Lee Wai-king said the party would continue to serve Hong Kong residents using different platforms and its own service stations in 18 districts this year.