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Following is a question by the Hon Cheung Kwok-che and a written reply by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, in the Legislative Council today (January 6):
Question:
Starting from September 2009, payments under the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) Scheme [including rent allowance (RA)] have all been changed to be calculated on the basis of calendar months and disbursed on the first day of each month. I have received complaints from quite a number of public rental housing (PRH) tenants whose CSSA payments used to be disbursed in the middle of each month pointing out that the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) has approached them to recover rent arrears for half of the month of August. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) given that since June 2007, the Social Welfare Department (SWD) has been transferring the RA for CSSA households residing in PRH to HA directly for payment of PRH rents, of the reasons for HA recovering rent arrears from such CSSA households;
(b) whether SWD has attempted to assist in solving the aforesaid problem; if it has, of the reasons why the situation of rent arrears among CSSA households residing in PRH still exists; and
(c) of the current number of CSSA households residing in PRH who have paid rent arrears by themselves; whether SWD will pay back the RA concerned to them; if so, when it will do so?
Reply:
President,
(a) and (b) Under the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) Scheme, rent allowance is payable to CSSA recipients to meet their accommodation expenses (including public housing rentals).
The existing Computerised Social Security System (CSSS) of the Social Welfare Department (SWD) came into operation in October 2000. CSSA (including the rent allowance above) has since been released through either one of the following methods:
(i) for CSSA cases approved after the CSSS commenced operation, the rent allowance and other CSSA payments are released on a calendar month basis (ie from the first day of each month to the end of the month). This payment method is the same as that adopted by the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) for calculating public housing rentals.
(ii) for CSSA cases approved before the CSSS commenced operation, the rent allowance and other CSSA payments continued to be released to the recipients on a payment month (ie the whole month calculated from the date when a recipient became eligible for CSSA) basis. For example, for a recipient who became eligible for CSSA on the 15th day of a month, his payment month would be the period from the 15th day of each month to the 14th day of the following month. There were about 100,000 cases to which CSSA was released on such payment month basis, and about 60% of these cases were residing in public rental housing. For these public rental housing cases, the period covered by the rent allowance from SWD was different from the calendar month used by HA to calculate public housing rentals. However, since SWD had already taken this into account in determining the monthly rent allowance, the amount of rent allowance payable to the recipients had not been affected.
Having regard to the comment of many CSSA recipients on the payment month arrangement that the release of CSSA payments to them on a calendar basis would increase their convenience in budgeting expenses, SWD has aligned the payment arrangement to one on a calendar basis across-the-board since September 1, 2009.
In implementing the new arrangement, SWD has already ensured that the amount of rent allowance (including the public housing rentals transferred from SWD to HA direct) payable to a recipient would not be affected. Since May 2009, SWD has also operated four telephone hotlines, and set up in August 2009 designated counters at its Social Security Field Units to handle recipients' enquiries regarding the change in payment arrangement. SWD and the Housing Department (HD) meanwhile also tackled the problem of rental discrepancy of some CSSA households living in public rental housing who were previously on the payment month arrangement. The reason for the discrepancy was that before the implementation of the arrangement for direct transfer of public housing rentals from SWD to HA in June 2007, SWD had already released to CSSA recipients on the payment month arrangement their rent allowance calculated on that basis, but the recipients had not yet made payment of the public housing rentals to HA correspondingly.
To enable households with the rental discrepancy problem to prepare in advance for repayment of the rent arrears, SWD and HD have issued letters to these households to explain their individual situation. HD also exercises flexibility in dealing with the matter, including allowing the households to settle the rent arrears by instalments.
(c) The number of households in public rental housing involved in the discrepancy problem is about 25,000, of which about 22,000 have already settled the outstanding rentals.
As explained above, since the rent allowance payable to CSSA recipients has never been affected, there is no need for SWD to reimburse any allowance to the recipients concerned.
Ends/Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Issued at HKT 12:01
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