Kapok | Social Responsibility

Eric Sautedé

The summary of the 2014 Chief Executive policy address included a small box, oddly entitled “Tips for the Elderly”, in which we were told that elderly citizens were entitled to a significant subsidy of MOP62,000 per year “or approximately MOP5,166 per month”.  This supposedly included the wealth partaking scheme, to which the healthcare vouchers of MOP600 should be added. For the 2015 fiscal year, this subsidy increased slightly, inching towards MOP70,000 a year, and then there are also many other subventions for “disadvantaged people” and citizens with disabilities, including a one-year waver for public housing, a daily food aid budget or a disability pension of up to MOP15,000 per year. All of these measures are real and substantial, even though I do not know anybody around me who could live on that kind of budget, except of course for Filipino, Indonesian or Vietnamese domestic helpers, who as full-time employees working six-days a week—and often more—are entitled to a meager minimum of MOP3,000 per month, including their lodging allowance.
The video of a middle-aged lady slapping an elderly woman in a wheelchair that went viral on social media earlier this week is a clear reminder that poverty, disability or ageing issues cannot be quantified, whatever the amount of money granted. True, the “slapping incident” almost immediately prompted a swift reaction from authorities: the Public Security Police quickly referred the case to the Social Welfare Bureau, resulting in the perpetrator being deferred to the Public Prosecutions Office—for having harmed the physical integrity of another person—and the abused elder being transferred to an elderly residential care home. But even though this family was clearly identified by social services and has since benefitted from government-sponsored financial aid as well as counseling, this “incident” has also triggered a community-wide soul-searching campaign onto the how and why this kind of situation transpired. As Cecilia Ho, a social worker, pointed out, “in this case, the result is suspected domestic violence, but the cause is social responsibility.”
Beyond financial aid and legal dispositions, many issues are at stake: the fact that Macau is a rapidly ageing society; the availability and quality of welfare infrastructure and the general quality of life of citizens.
The ageing ratio (the elderly to the youth population) has dramatically increased between the two censuses from 33.6 in 2001 to 60.7% in 2011, and even stood at 73.8 in 2014! The elderly now account for 8.4% of the total population. Facilities for elderly or mentally-challenged people are limited and not sufficiently staffed, be them run by NGOs or private entities, and Paul Pun, the director of Caritas, has stressed that the occurrence of such a dramatic and “shocking” situation might actually be “the tip of the iceberg” and not really the exception.
One of the big ideas proposed by the government is to develop additional facilities on Hengqin Island, as stated again in April by Alexis Tam. But then, what will be the terms and with what kind of consequences for the cohesiveness of the community and inter-generational relations? If Secretary Tam is right to urge his services to do more and better, the head of the Family and Community Service department, Au Chi Keung, is equally right when he explains that beyond the widely-shared revulsion, there was an extraordinary amount of “stress” affecting the perpetrator that led to that horrific occurrence: the scene took place in one of the most densely populated districts of Macao, Fai Chi Kei, and it was confirmed later that the old lady was the mother of the one slapping her, and had suffered a stroke. Reports by the media and social workers then indicated that the middle-aged lady was the only breadwinner in the family and that besides her handicapped mother—who was smacked because she refused to activate the break on her wheelchair—she also had to take care of an unemployed father and a mentally-challenged brother. When one has to work 48 hours a week to ensure the mere survival of a family, with no prospects of improving her situation and almost no holidays, along with deficient social services and degraded neighborhoods, what are the conditions ripe for?