Budget Speech

Caring and Inclusion

160. The Government will provide an extra 1500 subsidised elderly home care service places this year, involving an annual expenditure of about $150 million.  The Government is also taking forward 66 new projects, providing about 8 800 residential care places and about 2 800 subsidised day care service places for the elderly in the coming few years.

161. The Government has substantially increased the resources allocated to rehabilitation services in recent years.  The number of places for on-site pre-school rehabilitation services has been increased by 1 000 to 8 000 in the current school year and is expected to further increase to 10 000 in 2022/23 school year.

162. The Labour Department launched the Racial Diversity Employment Programme last year to enable NGOs to provide one- stop employment services for ethnic minority job seekers through a case management approach.  Over 500 ethnic minority job seekers are expected to participate in the first two years of the programme.

163. The revenue for the Lotteries Fund has dropped substantially due to the epidemic.  I will make an injection of $1.1 billion to ensure that development projects in respect of much- needed social welfare services premises (particularly major facilities for elderly and rehabilitation services) can proceed as scheduled and that the feasibility studies and detailed design work for such projects will not be affected.