Hong Kong’s revamped home and youth affairs bureau plans to stockpile emergency supplies and build a new network of volunteers to raise community mobilisation abilities in crises.
But Alice Mak Mei-kuen, in her first interview with the Post three weeks after she was appointed Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs, brushed aside concerns that these groups, established across 18 districts, were a duplication of roles in existing organisations.
“Now we rely on district councillors and organisations to render immediate support to the community, but it has been challenging for the government to get an accurate estimate of the number of people we could mobilise in cases of emergency,” Mak said on Thursday.
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The 51-year-old, who served as a district councillor for 25 years before she was made responsible for the direction of the city’s district administration, sought to justify the need for “district services and community care teams”.
The term was first proposed by new Hong Kong leader John Lee Ka-chiu in his manifesto in April.
“We shall no longer solely rely on the government’s power to address district needs during urgent situations. What we are building is not only a network of volunteers, but also a system to better mobilise resources in a timely manner,” said Mak, a veteran member of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions.
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Hong Kong’s community mobilisation ability, or lack thereof, was singled out by senior mainland Chinese health officials as a fatal weakness during the Omicron-fuelled coronavirus pandemic that peaked in March.
Citing the Covid-19 outbreak and a rare power outage affecting more than 20,000 households last month, the new secretary said a government-managed stockpile of emergency assets should also be set up so that they could be dispersed to residents during emergencies.
Mak named torches as one of the items that should be stocked, saying she realised not many families in Hong Kong had one ready at home.
But she did not explain whether doing so would duplicate the role of the Government Logistics Department, which is responsible for providing and inspecting emergency supplies.
When asked how the new network – coordinated by civil servants responsible for home affairs – would differ from the Civil Aid Service, an auxiliary force providing services during emergencies, Mak said volunteers would also organise regular visits to residents and manage new “Community Care stations” to forge relationships in the community.
She added that the scope of work by the teams would be wider than that of the existing Area Committees, District Fire Safety Committees and District Fight Crime Committees, which she described as bodies mainly offering advice to the government.
On the mainland, subdistrict offices known as “street offices” have been crucial to “grid governance” when executing measures in Covid-19 related lockdowns and distributing of daily necessities. These were largely done with the help of a sophisticated digital identification and surveillance system.
Mak said Hong Kong authorities had no intentions to introduce a similar system in the city due to privacy and legal considerations, but floated that the financial hub could learn from subdistrict offices’ “organised systems of training and drills” tailor-made for volunteers.
She did not indicate when these teams would be formed, but said more details would be announced by the city leader in his maiden policy address on October 19.
Hong Kong youth chief won’t rule out selection system for district councillors
Since the 1980s, Hong Kong has relied on district councils, mutual aid committees and area committees to ensure that the government is responsive to local needs.
At the end of 2019, following months of anti-government protests, the opposition bloc swept the majority of seats in an election. But a new oath-taking requirement that arose from the national security law prompted waves of resignations and disqualifications of district representatives in the bloc last year.
As of Thursday, only 225 district councillors – or 47 per cent – remained in their seats, with many ongoing programmes suspended.
Asked if the method of electing district councils would be overhauled or even replaced by appointment, the new minister said a review of district administration was under way and that the revival of an appointment system was one of the options considered.
Mak, who was appointed in 1994 to serve as a district councilor in Kwai Tsing, said broad representation, diversity and district experience would be considered in selecting representatives.
But Tik Chi-yuen, a lawmaker of the centrist party Third Side, warned that it would be a retrogression if the democratic representation of the council were to fall.
He added that if direct seats were retained in next year’s district election, his party hoped to field candidates to run for the posts.
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