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Weak economy makes life harder for poorest in HK

Madam Lor combs Hong Kong's markets for the cheapest vegetables she can find and says she will soon give up her home phone as the charges are too high.

Several times a day, the rag and bone seller dashes out in search of discarded paper cartons but takes care not to leave her flat for too long, where her retarded son is home alone.

"I may have lived one life so far but I've worked several lifetimes," said the former dishwasher and odd-job worker, 67.

She hasn't found a paying job in five years, a period in which the territory of 6.8 million has been hit by two recessions.

One may spot more Rolls Royces per capita in Hong Kong than anywhere else, but behind the glamor 30 percent of its families, or 1.75 million people, live below the poverty line.

Hong Kong has always had its share of poverty but officials have traditionally seen the problem as so marginal they never bothered to define it.

Even today, the government has no official definition of the poverty line. Researchers, however, believe it to be around HK$3,750 (US$480) a person a month.

Madam Lor and her son would easily qualify.

There is hardly any walking room in their tiny rented flat, crammed with paper boxes and plastic bags filled with unwanted knick-knacks Madam Lor plans to sell to recyclers.

"I sometimes fight to pick paper and other stuff," she said. "People guard their turf. I have to bring them into the flat or they get stolen. They have to be cleaned or they stink."

She earns about HK$20 a day from selling paper cartons, but the two live mainly on the HK$2,500 monthly social welfare that her son gets for his mental handicap.

"It is this disabled man who helps me out," she says, pointing to her son, 28, seated on a potty.

With unemployment at a record 7.7 percent and poised to go higher in coming months, many find life increasingly tough. Some have not been able to find jobs for years.

A survey of 3,086 low-income households by the City University over the period from September 1999 to January 2001 showed 40 percent avoid taking buses, a cheap mode of transport.

A third don't turn on the lights at home even when necessary, and close to a quarter buy food just before the markets shut to take advantage of cheaper prices near closing time.

Almost 32 percent cannot afford to give "red packets" -- or small tokens of money to wish recipients well on auspicious days. Ten percent cannot afford medicine.

Wong Hung, social studies lecturer at the City University, said income disparity has worsened over the last decade.

The poorest 10 percent of families -- with less than HK$6,000 a month -- claimed 0.9 percent of all income earned in 2001, down from 1.3 percent in 1991, according to government statistics.

"The theory that there is a trickling down effect, that the poor will get the fruits in the end, does not happen here because the government's non-interventionist policy prevents it," Wong said.
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