Mr. Ng Wai Tung is a social worker with the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), a non-governmental, non-profit volunteer-based social service organization in Hong Kong. During his 26 year career, he has assisted elderly clients to petition for their legal rights to apply for the public housing and to ensure that they are receiving minimum wage for their work., His life goal is to help the elderly and the homeless.
Q: How does SoCO conduct the research and investigation of working elderly in Hong Kong?
Ng: We found that there were many labor unions in Hong Kong. They study on some big topics like minimum wage, maximum working hours, standard labor time, etc. As for SoCO, our focus is marginalized groups of people. We have done research about the homeless, the elderly, the mentally ill and children. From this research, we published a photo book called We Live (“活着” in Chinese) about the homeless and the working elderly.
Q: How do you find your research subjects?
Ng: Actually we have been engaged in studying the problems of working elderly in Hong Kong for more than 20 years. Gradually we find that they have problems with renting houses, medical care and job hunting. Hong Kong holds 1.17 million old people over 65 years old, among which more than 100 thousand are still working.
The government says that you can have MPF (Mandatory Provident Fund), but that didn’t start until 2000. In the past decade, global finance has encountered sharp declines twice, in 2008 and 2013. The market in Hong Kong collapsed, and therewith the MPF. It was definitely not what those working elderly had expected, although the money was already very little.
They thought there must be a certain amount of money. They thought their money would accumulate because they put money in every month.
Q: Can you give us some examples about the problems working elderly are facing in detail?
Ng: There is another factor apart from the MPF, the minimum wage. Let’s take the job of a cleaner as an example. The government contractor is responsible for employing cleaners. Contractors will advertise 7,000 HKD for each cleaner, but in reality they only pays 3,500 HKD. (The Hong Kong Government implemented the city’s first minimum wage law in 2011. The statutory minimum wage was set at HK$28/hour. As at May 2017, the minimum wage is HK$34.50/hour)
(Then there is the housing problem) the City Council in Haitang Street takes charge of the reconstruction work. They pull down many old residential buildings in Sham Shui Po to build what they call “better houses”. “Improve your life quality”, this is their slogan. Do you know what this means? Once they finish the new houses, they can sell them in better prices. Li Ka Shing cooperated with City Council to build the first new flat here in the intersection of Kweilin Street and Lai Chi Kok Road. Guess how much for each unit? Seven million. That is where exactly some of these working elderly had been living.
I made a calculation using my salary. I have been a social worker for 26 years, and I cannot buy one unit of that house even I triple my bank savings. If I have to give the down payment which is 30% of the full, it will be two million HKD, but all I have in my bank account is 0.2 million HKD. You see their slogan sounds really wonderful. But my life would be already wonderful if I had seven million. How ironic it is!
Q: Many of these working elderly originally come from China’s Guangdong Province, so why did they choose to come to Hong Kong?
Ng: Like Fok Mei Sung, she came to Hong Kong because her husband had come earlier. Very often, (people came because) it was war time when these elderly were young. The Great Famine in 1956, the Cultural Revolution in 1966, and like my father, he came here in 1949, it’s because of the war. (More recently)younger generations come to Hong Kong to look after their aged parents, or the wife comes to take care of her husband. They have no choice.
I met Lam Wai Kau soon after he came to this city in Sham Shui Po. If he never came here, he would still be with his son, and live a happy life, own a big house in the countryside. He supported the family by fishing (when he lived with them in the Mainland). That would make him feel self-fulfilled. Although he might not make big money, he had his own warm family.
Mr. Ng could not stop crying when talking of Lam Waikau’s
life experience in Hong Kong
Now he is forced to be separated from his son. Maybe the boy comes to visit him once every month. But after all, his parents have been divorced and all things changed. So I think for poor people, many questions are really hard to answer. Just like you asked “Why did they come?”, I also wonder why they came, because I don’t know the answer either. It just naturally happened. They just did what they should do, for their parents, their wives or husbands, their sons. Poor housing conditions, exhausting jobs, very few holidays…
They all work very hard. They are getting older and older, but still have to financially support their children. Many children of these working elderly have unstable jobs. In fact, it should be the time for their retirement and they should be enjoying the rest of their life. However, I see nothing.
I don’t know much of the conditions of working elderly in mainland China, but in Hong Kong, what I have been seeing is that this group of people work too hard, earn too little, and their money flows to their next generation. In return, their children have little ability to take good care of them.
Q: You just mentioned that you have more than 20 years’ experience as a social worker, then how do you see changes of conditions of working elderly over the past years?
Ng: Hong Kong has developed as a city, but the labor and retirement protection (have not developed at) the same speed. The government implemented the MPF on Dec. 1, 2000 which means till now the maximum contribution period is only 16 to 17 years. What’s more, actually 85% of the retired elderly cannot enjoy the benefit, because it is not universally beneficial. Those with low salary (less than 5,000 HKD per month) or short contribution period benefit little from it. As I have mentioned, we have the standard of minimum wages until May 1, 2011. It seems that the system has been making some progress: the elderly can monthly get 2 HKD more every two years, but at the same time, the inflation of prices and rising rent lead to no substantial improvements of the salary increase.
Therefore, changes of elderly wages have presented the reality of social economic growth, but have not achieved the “sharing the fruits of social development”. The elderly cannot benefit from the knowledge-based economy. In spite of three layers of elderly welfare today (Old aged allowance, subsistence allowance for the elderly and CSSA, Comprehensive Social Security Assistance), there is no real progress in the scheme of universal retirement protection which has been put forward since the era of Governor Chris Patten.
Q: What do you think about the future?
Carrie Lam’s winning the chief executive election…. (the) majority of the 777 votes she got came from the Pro-Beijing Camp and industrial and commercial circles. So there is no doubt she is going to lean to the business circles to some degree.
She has mentioned many times about caring about grassroots groups. And when she ran for the campaign, she said she only supported a retirement protection scheme with financial situation checking, so she should react to the housing problem. But meanwhile, it will take seven years to build new houses. In terms of the labor issue, Lam did not talk about implementing a progressive income tax system (a negative income tax rate for the poor), therefore it seems that she won’t make major movements in the aspects of working elderly retirement and labor protection in the coming five years. In my opinion, she won’t make any breakthrough in the labor law, labor protection and retirement protection.
Membership of the Council will still be managed by the business community (there is only one member from the labor group). And the functional constituencies of legislative council and the Pro-Beijing Camp both lay particular stress on business. In conclusion, it is difficult for the issue of the elderly grassroots labor to be put on the government agenda.
