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The Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, today (September 3) urges employees of the social welfare sector to take into account the interests of their service users and ensure that the ˇ§collective leaveˇ¨ action on Wednesday (September 5) will not disrupt services for the disadvantaged, especially the elderly and disabled persons, as well as emergency services.
Mr Cheung said that since he and the Director of Social Welfare, Mr Stephen Fisher, assumed office on July 1, they have been communicating and exchanging views with employees of the social welfare sector and representatives of related organisations and associations to find out the challenges and problems they encountered in the implementation of the lump sum grant subvention system.
ˇ§On the basis of maintaining the lump sum grant subvention policy, the Director of Social Welfare has reconvened the Lump Sum Grant Steering Committee last Wednesday (August 29) to review the operation and effectiveness of the system with non-governmental organisations, social welfare staff organisations and service users, and to explore possible measures to implement the system more efficiently and fine-tuning the system. The second meeting will be held by the end of this month,ˇ¨ he said.
Mr Cheung stressed that the Government is willing to explore with employees of the social welfare sector possible measures through the platform of the steering committee.
Ends/Monday, September 3, 2007
Issued at HKT 19:08
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