The Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, chaired the first meeting of the third-term Commission on Poverty (CoP) this afternoon (August 23).
The third-term CoP comprises 21 non-official members from different sectors including the Legislative Council, business, welfare organisations, education and social entrepreneurship. For the first time, an ethnic minority member has been appointed to the CoP. The Secretary for Labour and Welfare, the Secretary for Home Affairs, the Secretary for Education and the Secretary for Food and Health continue to be ex-officio members.
Mr Cheung said, “The membership of the CoP is highly representative, which is conducive to the promotion of tripartite collaboration amongst the community, business and government, and the examination of policies and measures to alleviate poverty and support the disadvantaged.”
At the meeting, members discussed a number of tasks of the CoP, namely monitoring the poverty situation through the analytical framework of the poverty line as well as taking forward the work of the Community Care Fund and the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund established under the CoP. Members took note of the poverty line analytical framework and the supplementary analyses developed under the framework, including a thematic study on the elderly poverty situation, an analysis on households facing higher poverty risk and a study on the effects of demographic changes to the poverty figures. Members also noted that the poverty analysis and statistics for 2017 will be released in the fourth quarter of this year.
In addition, members were briefed on the key tasks and achievements made by the CoP in the last two terms. Members also provided views on the CoP’s future work direction. read more