Letters | If Hong Kong is so rich, why are our children selling scrap cardboard?

Readers discuss children in poverty in Hong Kong, how fintech seems bent on encouraging spending, the efficacy of the salt and sugar labelling scheme and suggest how to further freedom of speech in China

Reading Time:3 minutes

Children splash in puddles on Tung Choi Street on October 13. In rich and peaceful Hong Kong, every child should be happily going to school, getting a good education and playing with their peers. Photo: Felix Wong

Published: 6:00am, 23 Nov 2021

On the face of it, Hong Kong is a rich, peaceful city admired by many. But it wasn’t always so. Young children in my generation, back in the 1950s or 1960s, would string beads or thread plastic flowers to help make ends meet. Most young people then struggled to afford leisure, never mind lead an easy life.

But how is it that in our rich city today, there are still 274,000 children living in poverty, according to government statistics?

Young children should all be happily going to school, playing with their peers and getting a good education. But according to a survey carried out from June last year to September this year, some children are having to sell scrap cardboard – a lowly job that some elderly Hongkongers do to scrape by – to help make ends meet.

After all these years, what has the government done to help people out of poverty? It feels like we are sliding back into the age of threading plastic flowers.

The government should be doing more in-depth analysis to find out the cause of this virulent problem in our society. And pumping in resources in the right direction to extend a helping hand.

Randy Lee, Ma On Shan