Remarks of SLW on $2 Scheme
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Reporter: Good morning Mr Sun. You talked about the Government's plan to allow beneficiaries to check the number of remaining trips under the monthly cap of 240 trips. Could you elaborate more on this? What exactly would be done in terms of promotion to ensure senior citizens are fully aware of the changes before the amendments take effect no later than September next year?
Secretary for Labour and Welfare: Thank you for your questions. With the capping arrangements being in place, i.e. the number of trips to be taken by beneficiaries under the $2 Scheme would be no more than 240 per month, it is important for them to be able to check whenever they want how many trips are remaining for that month. Right now this is not within the functions of the Octopus cards they are holding, hence we have to create that function for them to check. Most likely they have to go to the machines, what we called Octopus card checkers, installed at places like MTR stations which they can check their balance and recent transactions, to tap their cards and check how many trips are remaining for that month.
It is also equally if not more important to reach out in a very extensive way to beneficiaries about changes that are going to be made towards the $2 Scheme. By the time the scheme is changed to "$2 and 20 per cent", i.e. users have to pay 20 per cent of the original fare for trips exceeding $10, we have to make it very clear to them and allow them to adapt to the changes. This is going to be one of our major efforts coming along and we are going to work on that to make sure they are well informed. By the time the new changes are implemented, they would find it easy to use.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the remarks.)
Ends/Saturday, March 1, 2025
Issued at HKT 11:32
Issued at HKT 11:32
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