COVID-19 In Hong Kong: Plight Of The Poor In One Of World’s Richest Cities | Insight | Full Episode

hong kong one of the richest cities in the world with billionaires controlling assets worth of billions of dollars but it's also one of the most unequal in terms of income levels and the wealth gap is widening between the rich and the poor the poverty situation is quite serious in hong kong there will be about 1.4 million hong kong people are in poverty before the pandemic struck the poor were already struggling to make a living now in the economic aftermath of the outbreak the poor have become more afraid and increasingly unsure about their future be able to survive the impact of the pandemic and is there a way out of the seemingly endless cycle of poverty [Music] it's another busy day in the central district of hong kong a bustling metropolis of some 7.4 million people and home to some of the world's biggest banks and multinational companies but amid the gleaming skyscrapers and luxury thoroughfares lies a neighborhood that appears stuck in a perpetual time war the streets are dotted with worn down buildings and cramped apartments they're also filled with a multitude of densely packed stalls and traders hawking their cheap and colorful way this is the working class neighborhood of samsui pole it is a world apart from the opulence of hong kong's central district it is here that some of the poorest of the city live a place where life is paired down to basics mr salam is a 54 year old single father living in this neighborhood home is a small 150 square feet subdivided flat that he shares with his teenage daughter a subdivided flat is a standard apartment in hong kong which is split into multiple dwellings in order to maximize the number of people who can reside in a very small space inflated housing costs astronomical rental rates and difficult access to public housing have left many poor hong kongers with no other viable options but to live here and mr lam is one of them one mr hong kong from the mainland with his family when he was about three years old they came here in search of a better life but things had not turned out the way he had hoped he kept switching jobs to earn a better income foreign is one of the 1.4 million people who are living just below the poverty line in hong kong that represents around 20 percent of the population according to a 2018 government report the level of poverty is the highest in 10 years according to the hong kong government they use the relative poverty concept to define poverty in hong kong so if they household their income is less than half of the median of that household size for example a four-person household family in hong kong if their income is less than two thousand and seven hundred us dollars they can be classified as poor according to hong kong often but if they are just one person family so if they are less than about 500 and 12 us dollars they will be classified as poor so it is quite low for those one person and two person family because many of them are elderly people [Music] all his life mr lam has been moving from job to job to make ends meet but since the pandemic struck things have taken a turn for the worse the city's borders have remained closed entire industries were also shut down almost overnight tourism has plunged to zero an unemployment rate has surged to a nearly 16-year high at 6.4 percent as the city continues to feel the brunt of the economic fallout the impact is also being deeply felt by mr lam he was asked to leave his job at a restaurant after a ban on social gathering and dining services came into force so he got a toll foreign and the second quarter so our gp drop our unemployment rate rise from 2.8 to 6.4 percent now and unemployment rate for people who live under poverty is even higher so um the impact is quite uh serious those live in poor condition they are the one who are more likely to be fired so the situation is quite serious in hong kong for like construction sector and for like catering accommodations double digits has since been getting help from the society for community organizations or so-called a grassroots organization dedicated to serving the poor and underprivileged ms c lai shan is a community organizer with soco and has been with the organization for over 15 years helping those in need she says the pandemic has caused the majority of those she serves to lose their jobs actually it's quite serious to affect those hong kong people but especially for the underprivileged they are affected more by the kobe 19 we can see those there underprivileged people and many of them they have the job and but now because of the pandemic we can see around over 80 percent of them actually underemployed with little hope of returning to the food industry anytime soon mr lam took up a job at a massacre-making factory with much lesser pay mask making is a booming industry especially during the height of the pandemic however he did not stay long in the job due to stiff competition stringent quality checks and an oversupply of workers soon forced factories um foreign with the possibility of a jobless future mr lam becomes constantly worried he keeps asking himself if he could survive living in one of the most expensive cities in the world apart from having to pay for his rent and food he still has to provide for his daughter's education and other personal needs [Music] is double difficulty for those people invasion is hard food is expensive or even at the beginning the month is so expensive and then the income is decreased there and so many problems and even they have many extra needs they they need to handle it because of they need to have protection gears they need to pay for sure or even their children they need to attend the online class so they need to pay to the computer or more internet free and they maybe they don't have this kind of equipment and they face many difficulties and also they have more very many conflicts [Music] the government has introduced several schemes in the form of wage subsidies to help employers retain their workers unfortunately nearly one-fourth of employers who benefited from the scheme do not keep their staff especially after the pandemic started to eat into their bottom line the unemployed also do not receive any financial assistance from the government the whole idea of the employment support scheme is to keep the employers afloat so they can keep the employees if the employers cannot be kept afloat and close down then the people will lost the jobs in hong kong we do not have like direct unemployment benefit for people to claim because we believe that if we have that on the movement benefit people will will become lazy they will not go to work and just like the european country benefits if the benefit is too too good that people will not want to work [Music] with the hong kong economy entering into its first recession in a decade the effects are now being felt across all segments of the society especially the poor faced with the prospects of mounting bills and no promise of a decent job mr lam's worries begin to grow with each passing day how is he going to cope with the financial stress and anxiety in the coming days and months is there a way out of his predicament [Music] with its soaring skyscrapers hong kong has long been regarded as a prosperous and thriving metropolis its magnificent architectural landscape is a clear testament to its wealth and power but amid the city's economic prosperity lies a dark side [Music] there are many of those who are struggling in life and are priced out of the market many simply can't afford to buy a decent place they can call home thousands of them especially the poor are now living in partitioned apartments known as coffin homes these tiny cramped spaces in yamate are where some of the poor in hong kong seek shelter 52 year old former waiter akwok not his real name used to live in shenzhen he traveled to hong kong every day for work because he can't afford to buy or rent a decent apartment in hong kong but ever since the pandemic struck borders have shut and he has had to scramble to find a place to stay with exorbitantly high rentals even during the current pandemic and global recession he's forced to seek out cheaper accommodation elsewhere [Music] and he ended up here at these coffin homes measuring just three by six square feet is even smaller than a standard car park space but that's all aqua can afford for now [Applause] has been living in a coffin home for almost half a year now the entire flat of 450 square feet or the size of three single parking lots is divided and shared with 19 other people akwork who is now unemployed wants to move out of this place and has been actively looking for a job but with borders shut jobs have become scarce he has been doing some cleaning jobs from time to time just to get by but what he earns is still not enough to cover his daily expenses as the pay is just too low most of the time he just stays in his bunk come on [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] um adding to their misery is the unaffordable housing market a small 363 square feet apartment in hong kong can easily cost a million dollars or more [Music] for the tiny space the aquat currently occupies he still has to pay about 230 us dollars a month with no cooking facility available he has to buy his own food that will cost him an additional 13 us dollars a day um our housing price problem is very complicated there are a lot of uh causes one of course is u.s policy we are linked to the hundred dollar usp money then we have to our housing price will go up second we are more and more opened up and integrated with china a lot of china chinese students come home and study we receive more than 10 to 20 000 student athletes every year so they have to rent an apartment in hong kong if they cannot get the accommodation in school so that as a push push up the rent and also don't forget china 20 years ago china basically doesn't have any foreign reserves but now china has more than 3 trillion us dollar even 2 of this free trillion dollar come to hong kong it can buy up all the new apartment in hong kong so um the housing price is uh expensive because we target ourselves as a financial center and the land that we have is very limited their rent is is crazy okay they just increase one four or twofold just two or three years time so it is quite hard for you to survive in hong kong many low income families use more than forty percent or fifty percent of their incomes to for their housing with an ever-growing demand for space in the tiny territory property developers have moved in to take advantage of the growing market for all it's worth today there are an estimated 200 000 people in hong kong living in such tiny subdivided units still in spite of all the harsh realities 31 year old silo has not abandoned his dream of owning a better house one day the former convict feels that he still has a future ahead of him even after he was put out of a job in the catering industry when the pandemic struck but for now he has to accept life for what it is living in a coffin home sharing a space of about 500 square feet with 20 other people life inside the coffin home can be unbearable for him at times foreign foreign [Applause] [Music] to help him deal with life's pressures the organization has been visiting people who live in these coffin homes to distribute mass and sanitizers in hope to ward off a cobit outbreak in these crowded spaces to occupy his time silo has started to do volunteer work with the organization hoping to help others who are in a similar situation as him foreign me actually it's quite challenging for us because you know in co in during this kind of period and you need to work according to the guideline from the social welfare department or from the government's um there are many restrictions you don't cannot take contact with people and but we are facing a present demand of the lower caste so we cannot just keep a distance from those people so we need to overwhelm our time to handle to help these people immediately at 31 time is on silo's side he can still re-enter the labor force and achieve his life's ambition once the economy improves and when the global pandemic situation begins to ease but for those entering into the twilight years of their lives many are facing a grim future how does the government of hong kong respond to the needs of its poor elderly population in the midst of a pandemic and economic slump [Music] it's a warm monday afternoon in kowloon city a frail looking elderly woman is busy collecting discarded cardboard boxes outside a supermarket completely oblivious to the streams of people who are rushing up and down the scorching pathways as they go about their daily business it's a familiar site here in hong kong especially in the poorest parts of the island ninety-five-year-old sri lai or affectionately known as poppa has been collecting disused cardboard and other scrap since she was in her forties she would start her day early in the morning and would only return home late at night after selling what she has collected to a recycling center for all her day's work she received around six us dollars [Music] my people around her age would normally be too weak to venture out and work instead they would be spending their time at home enjoying their retirement years but not sri lanka [Music] with no savings and family support she roams the streets every day from sunrise to sunset scavenging for plastic and cardboard to earn enough money in order to feed herself madame srila is among hong kong's rapidly growing aging population a significant portion of which lives in poverty utah [Music] according to a 2018 government report there are about 360 000 hong kongers over the age of 65 who now live in poverty they constitute about 25 percent of the city's elderly population the city also has the longest life expectancy and that makes it harder for them to sustain themselves financially without proper support and adequate savings hong kong now is the place where people have the longest life expectancy at birth where now we outlive japanese people we outlive people in switzerland so the the the expected age to live for men is 80 192 for women is 87 187 so the problem is the aging problem is actually we have more people retired than people who enter in the labor force do we notice that the living standard of the poor people poor elderly is really low many of them still they'll try to go to the white market in in in very late so they they can just pick up some rooting vegetables written fish as such i i don't think it is acceptable in a such a fluent city such developed city when she was young srilai helped her father run a stall selling chinese soups at the dockyard after the closure of the stall she found a job at a weaving factory her life was stable then but only for a while [Music] with little education there was little that she could do to improve her life scavenging disused cardboards therefore was the only option she felt she had left to earn some money and this is what she's been doing for almost 50 years ironically many of these senior citizens known by their nickname cardboard grannies are fiercely independent they'd like to continue working and feel useful instead of relying on handouts you've seen some of the pictures of the old ladies picking up the cardboards on the streets collecting them and these are most of the people we have actually uh ngos trying to approach them and help them and i said that why don't you apply for welfare and they say no i want to no matter how hard my life is i still want to live on my own own hands so so there and indeed people in the community who refuse to be help or they don't want to seek help from the government so what we've been offering some of the assistance but they're not always welcoming such assistance from the government or reunite the the civil society organization and and the ngos is fighting for a universal retirement benefit for the elderly in hong kong so it should be a fund scheme so we can we have a saving for all and then it is a it's a universal scheme but the government rejected madame srilai has four daughters and a son but she doesn't expect any help from any of them she thinks that her children have their own problems to manage and does not want to be a burden to them who are out on the streets there's less economic activity and therefore less boxes to collect usually she's able to get about six us dollars a day however today she has only managed to get three us dollars from what she has gathered the reality is the elderly people are more vulnerable to the current pandemic but she's not worried about the possibility of contracting the disease [Music] is barely scraping by especially during the pandemic but she's determined to continue working pushing her trolley loaded with cardboard through the city until she can't do so anymore and there are many poor people like her who are struggling and fighting to cope and survive during their twilight years but for how long can they free themselves from the vicious cycle of poverty and what will happen if another wave of infection returns and hits the city [Music] hong kong has long earned the reputation as the land of the super rich the city today has 96 billionaires with a combined wealth of about 280 billion dollars but is also known as the land of the mega poor over a million of hong kong's 7.4 million people live below the poverty line according to a 2016 report by aid agency oxfam the monthly income of the top 10 of hong kong's residents was almost 44 times that of the bottom 10 and the divide between the halves and the half knots have grown over the years but creating wealth has proven to be very challenging especially in the current environment the city has been hit by a double whammy of a continuing political unrest and the covet 19 pandemic key factors which have contributed to the current economic slowdown and the impact is keenly felt by the low-income families who are struggling to make ends meet hong kong has already been hit by three waves of covet infections so far and the city's health minister has warned that with the winter season a fourth wave can happen time our quark is hoping that the pandemic will end soon so that it will help alleviate the suffering for people like him with no job and no future to look forward to he's getting very restless and desperate unsure where his next meal is going to come from and if he'll be able to continue to pay his rent every day he scooped up in his crammed cage home praying for better days to come foreign [Music] tries very hard to stay healthy especially during the current pandemic he's extremely afraid about the prospect of falling ill one day that's because getting sick is just too expensive for poor people foreign foreign there is some hope on the horizon hong kong's long recession has shown signs of easing buoyed by gradual improvement both in domestic economic activities and external demand the recovery of the chinese economy also plays a big part in helping other exporting economies in asia with the much needed source of demand the main priority of the hong kong government now is to prevent a fourth wave of infections from hitting the city so as to avoid another wave of economic pain so the most important thing is to try to avoid that possibility of having the pathway there will be different measures in in terms of input control and we are still working on some of the holes in our systems we've been improving them from them from time to time uh we are tight we're still tightening up some of the input controls from the high-risk countries coming back to hong kong now just in case the fourth wave comes then definitely the the first line we have to make sure is that we have sufficient facilities to look after the infected i will say if there is a full pandemic in or it is quite a while not not just one month or a half month this creates quite a problem because i think many saving or reserve of the poor people already just all have one month for half months if they do not have the incomes what they can do they will become homeless the coming months will be very crucial for hong kong not only does it have to prevent another surge of infections the government also has to ensure that its economy will remain on a recovery path so as to help ease the burden of the more vulnerable segments of the population especially the poor but the reality is monster protests have left the society deeply divided between the pro-democracy and pro-establishment camps high unemployment widening income gap skyrocketing property prices and the lack of affordable housing have led to the growing discontent among the people can the government act fast enough to reduce the economic and financial pain suffered by the people there was a movement last year actually revealed that hong kong people hong kong are very divided and actually because of this sort of movement we scare away a lot of tourists gave away a lot of investment so the hong kong economy dropped by like negative 2.9 percent over the in the last two quarters of last year the central government also uh launched this national metro security law because of this protestant this law of course i believe it will have a stabilization impact on the hong kong society it will make hong kong more stable but still i think the problem is not that you are able to suppress those people by force you may need to address that grievance so to address the grievance you may use economic means first for example whether you can provide them with a decent living condition jobs and so on but now it seems that there's still a lot of grievance among the young people among the poor people in hong kong i'm worried uh so we've been still thinking of any possible actions in the coming one or two months because the fourth wave will come it will likely around december or january and we do actually expect some job losses after the end of our employment support scheme and so we've been still thinking hard on what can we do more to help [Music] as the pandemic continues to inflict pain across hong kong many are holding on to what little they have hoping to ride out the storm and outlive one of the biggest tests of their lives for our however he seems to have lost all hope in life amidst the deepening poverty whatever little dream that he had left has now been swept away by the pandemic for now he intends to live from day to day taking each day as it comes trying to survive the challenge in an uncertain [Music] hong kong foreign [Music] [Music] cathode you

Channel: CNA Insider

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Keywords: CNA Insider, Channel NewsAsia, People stories, Asian perspectives, Insight, Asia news, Asia, Hong Kong, COVID-19, pandemic, poverty, economy, recession, inequality, subdivided flat, housing, unemployment, job loss, government, coffin home, land supply, public housing, working class, elderly, aging population, CNA, CNA documentary, coronavirus

Id: sSucwdOrLyY

Length: 48min 55sec (2935 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020