Growing inflation has driven some residential care homes for the elderly (RCHEs) to feed their residents unwanted food from markets.

Last month, upon receiving complaints from elderly people that they had been fed fatty meat at RCHEs, the Against Elderly Abuse of Hong Kong (AEAHK) launched investigations and afterwards accused in the Legislative Council (LegCo) that five private RCHEs in Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok and Kowloon City bought discarded pork meat from wet markets.

"We found that about 10 private RCHEs even bought rotten vegetable and dead fish," said assistant executive director Roy Lam.

In response to a question put forward by legislator Choy So-yuk in a LegCo session yesterday, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said that there had been 152 complaints against RCHEs relating to nutrition and diet over the past three years.

They include failure to provide food according to pre-set menus and inappropriate meal time.

A total of 16 complaints relating to food quality were found substantiated.

The Licensing Office of Residential Care Homes for the Elderly (LORCHE) issued advices and warning letters to the concerned RCHEs.

Lam attributed the outrage to the continuous inflation and insufficient Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) Scheme.

"The CSSA payment can hardly cover basic living costs," he said.

CSSA recipients will be given one additional month of welfare payments as proposed by the Financial Secretary John Tsang in the budget.

The government has also approved an increase of 4.4 percent to CSSA standard payments last week, following a 2.8 percent increase in February.

As such, the monthly subsidy to an eligible CSSA recipient rises to HK$1750 from HK$1675.

However, Lam said the increase cannot cover the inflation.

"If civil servants are getting at least a 5.29 percent pay increase, how come the CSSA increment is only 4.4 percent?"

He added while private RCHEs suffer from rising rents amid the current inflation, they do not receive any government funding.

As their operation relies much on the CSSA of the residents, the elderly homes are often left with no choice but resort to buying rotten food, he said.

Worse still, it is not easy to hold the RCHEs responsible for any health impact on the residents.

"The elderly often suffer from diseases associated with old age," Lam said. "And this becomes an excuse of the RCHEs."

Cheung said the LORCHE has stepped up it inspections, especially on homes that have been mentioned in complaints.

"Inspectors are now conducting more inspections during meal time and sometimes even outside office hours, on Sundays and public holidays," he said. "They will also collect feedback from residents so as to have a comprehensive assessment on the RCHEs."

However, the government will not consider including quality of food provided by RCHEs as one of the requirements in licensing, for different people have different needs.

(HK Edition 06/12/2008 page1)