Remarks by SHYA at media session
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Reporter: Can you explain the rationale behind splitting "Sha Ta" into two sub-districts? How will this improve service efficiency? How will the additional new teams in Sheung Shui Rural and Hang Hau West specifically address the needs of the growing population of those areas? And my second question is, what does regularising the care teams mean for their future, and have you envisioned their roles in the community involving?
Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs: As I said, we have assessed the service coverage and the demographic changes in each sub-district, we can see that the population of certain districts have increased, so we have increased two care teams to cater for the demographic changes. We have also examined and assessed the service coverage of the care teams, one specific team is in Sha Tau Kok and Ta Kwu Ling, so we have separated the two teams in the districts. So the number of care teams have been increased from 452 to 455, after our assessment on the demographic changes and the service coverage of each care team. This is to provide better services for our residents.
This is the latest figure as at the end of the second quarter, in the first term of the service, the care teams have visited about 530 000 elderly households and other households in need, and provided about 76 000 times of basic home or other support services, and organised about 38 000 district-level activities. So you can see, our care team members are very devoted and dedicated to community services, they are all volunteers, and they use their own time to serve the community. Last week, during the time of the typhoon, our care team members were also on standby at the shelters and in the districts to help our residents. I expect that in the second term, we can enhance our service and serve our community better. We have three directions in serving the community in the second term of the service. We plan to optimise the service in three key directions, the first one is for seamless continuity, and this is to provide our residents with continued service, we do not want to see any discrepancy or suspension in the service. We also want our service to be able to cater for the district needs. The third one is to deepen and broaden our service coverage, so that residents can be better served by the care teams.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Saturday, July 26, 2025
Issued at HKT 11:47
Issued at HKT 11:47
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