HONG KONG: Concern groups told a Legislative Council subcommittee yesterday that government services to mainland immigrants have broken down, become counterproductive and malicious.

As a means of addressing the problem, lawmakers joined with the concern groups in calling for more discretionary powers to award benefits to cross-border families.

At the Legislative Council subcommittee on issues relating to mainland immigrant families yesterday, Hong Kong Christian Institute's program secretary Lee Ling-hon said that the government's policies were too focused on economic prerequisites for immigration instead of taking a family-first focus. As a result, Lee said, the services had become counterproductive and malicious.

Society for Community Organisation organiser Sze Lai-shan said, "There are some 100,000 such families struggling with desperate living conditions, housing and medical care."

"For the most part they have no recourse and many avoid seeking medical help because they cannot afford it," she said, adding there were roughly 20,000 cross-border marriages last year.

Mission to New Arrivals general secretary Leung Yau-tung cited a case of a widow living in Shek Kip Mei who was thrown out along with her child from their public housing unit by the Housing Department when her husband died.

He also pointed out the current food bank allowance of six weeks of food per year was vastly under-resourced.

According to widow Ho Yuk-lin of the Spilt Families Concern Group, single parents of local residents traveling with a two-way permit such as herself were especially vulnerable since they were not entitled to many benefits enjoyed by one-way permit holders and mainland mothers whose husbands had not died or divorced.

Lawmaker from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, Wong Kwok-hing, lambasted the government for its inaction, calling for more flexibility in awarding benefits.

Civic Act-Up lawmaker Cyd Ho Sau-lan called for a census of single parent families to gauge the depth of the problem and for food services to be brought up to par for asylum seekers who receive food from the public purse up until their refugee status is resolved.

(HK Edition 02/23/2010 page1)