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Commission on Poverty convenes 12th meeting
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     The Chief Secretary for Administration, Mrs Carrie Lam, chaired the 12th meeting of the Commission on Poverty (CoP) this afternoon (August 18) to discuss the updated poverty line based on data in 2013 and the analysis of the poverty situation in Hong Kong in 2013.

     Following the framework agreed on by the CoP, the Government published the first official poverty line last September and pledged to update the analysis of the poverty line annually. At today's meeting, the Government Economist analysed the households below the poverty line in terms of their social, economic, housing and district characteristics, making reference to the data from 2013. Members took note of the findings and put forward some issues for further analysis.  Taking into account members' comments, the detailed analysis of the 2013 poverty situation and the poverty line will be fine-tuned for publication at the second CoP Summit which will be held later this year.

     Having regard to the suggestions in the 2014 Policy Address of continuing to strengthen support for low-income and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) families through the Community Care Fund (CCF), the CoP endorsed the relaunch of two assistance programmes, namely the "Subsidy for CSSA Recipients Living in Rented Private Housing" and the "One-off Living Subsidy for Low-income Households Not Living in Public Housing and Not Receiving CSSA".

     First launched in 2011 and relaunched in 2013, the "Subsidy for CSSA Recipients Living in Rented Private Housing" assistance programme provides subsidy for CSSA households living in rented private housing and paying rent which exceeds the maximum rent allowance under the CSSA Scheme. The Social Welfare Department conducted a review of the relaunched programme in 2013 and found that the programme in general could help alleviate the burden of beneficiary households on housing expenditure. Having regard to the suggestion in the Policy Address, the CoP agreed to relaunch the programme in 2014 to provide extra assistance to CSSA households. The programme to be relaunched will follow the existing practices on eligibility criteria and implementation details of the previous two exercises as well as disbursement of fixed amount of subsidy. Each eligible one-person CSSA household will be provided with a one-off subsidy of $2,000 and two-or-more-person CSSA households will receive $4,000. The estimated provision for the programme is around $49.3 million, benefitting over 14 400 households. The programme will be launched in late September 2014 and it is expected that the disbursement of subsidy will commence before the end of 2014.

     Last August the CoP endorsed the "One-off Living Subsidy for Low-income Households Not Living in Public Housing and Not Receiving CSSA" programme to receive applications from December 2, 2013.  At that time the projected total number of beneficiary households of the programme was some 78 700 and the estimated expenditure of this item was about $640 million. As at mid-August, the CCF Secretariat received some 48 000 applications in total.  Earlier on CCF conducted a review on the programme based on the applications received and the implementation situation up to June 30.  It was found that stakeholders (including beneficiaries) were positive towards the programme.  They thought that it could help low-income households to relieve their financial burden and supported the relaunch of the programme to help more people in need. To implement the initiative in the Policy Address and taking into account the effectiveness of the programme and views from various parties, the CoP agreed to relaunch the programme in 2015. The eligibility criteria and implementation details will follow existing practices of the programme. As for the amount of subsidy, the CoP agreed to raise the amount of subsidy and introduce one more tier for households with four persons or more to cater for the needs of bigger families. The revised subsidy amount is as follows:

  Household size (persons)     Amount of subsidy
  ------------------------     -----------------
           1                         $4,000
           2                         $8,000
           3                        $11,000
       4 or above                   $13,000

     The programme to be relaunched will receive applications from January to August 2015.  Beneficiary households under the current programme are not required to re-submit applications.  The CCF Secretariat will issue letters to the beneficiary households under the current programme and accept new applications in phases in accordance with the household size.  The provision for the programme is estimated to be $468.12 million. Based on the number of applications for the current programme, the estimated number of beneficiary households under the programme to be relaunched would be about 53 100.

     Members also noted that CoP will meet again on August 20 to discuss the study report on retirement protection by Professor Nelson Chow and his team.

Ends/Monday, August 18, 2014
Issued at HKT 20:11

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