The Community Care Fund will step in to assist needy people earning too little to benefit from tax relief measures in this year's budget. Steering committee members have agreed to provide direct funding to the needy, especially those who neither live in public housing nor qualify for Comprehensive Social Security Allowance. 

Committee members propose to distribute a one-off payment of HK$4,000 or HK$5,000 to elderly people still residing in private rental houses, according to Nelson Chow Wing-sun, one of the fund's steering committee members and a professor of social work and social administration at the University of Hong Kong. 

According to government statistics, there are about 12,000 elderly people either living in sub-divided houses or cubical apartments. Many are still awaiting approval to move into public housing. 

The direct distribution could start in June or July this year, Chow told China Daily. 

Committee members also plan to distribute an amount approximately equal to non-elderly on the waiting list for public housing for more than three years. 

These people, who are also living in rental houses and not receiving any allowance, inevitably fall out of the social safety net and do not benefit from the government's annual financial expenditure, Chow said. 

Committee members had requested the Housing Authority provide a list of those applicants. The request was declined on grounds that release of the names would be a violation of the applicants' privacy, according to committee member and lawmaker Cheung Kwok-che. Members also resonated with Financial Secretary John Tsang's proposal to include some of the fund's operating programs into the government's recurrent expenditures. 

Ho Hei-wah, another committee member and the director of the Society for Community Organization, said all of the fund's programs should be put into recurrent expenditures. He also said that with ample prudence, the government is financially capable. 

The fund, created with the principal aim to help those who fall out of the social safety net, is now running 12 programs to help the needy. 

Chow said however, the programs have seen popularity of varying levels, and not all of them should be included in recurrent expenditure. 

The School Lunch Subsidy scheme, which started in Sept, 2011, is already helping nearly 200,000 pupils from underprivileged families. 

"This scheme is especially popular, and it is indeed a great help to a lot of children growing up and absorbing nutrition, even if it's just HK$20 every day for every kid," said Chow. 

The fund appropriates HK$160 million a year for the lunch subsidy. Chow said the government should be capable of taking up that amount of expenditure. 

Some other programs have also been popular: Subsidy for Severely Disabled and Subsidy for Elders, who are on the waiting list of integrated home care services. The program provides household cleaning and escort services for medical consultations, according to Chow. 

andrea@chinadailyhk.com