Covid-19 further entrenched income, health, racial and educational inequalities across Hong Kong, experts say
- Society’s most vulnerable have suffered disproportionately during the pandemic, with many low-paying jobs gone, parents and their children confined to tiny homes, and domestic helpers and the poor elderly at heightened risk of exposure
- The government’s response – funnelling money to businesses instead of directly to workers – has only worsened the plight of the lower class, experts say
This is the eighth story in a series on the Covid-19 disease, one year after it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It looks at how Covid-19 has exacerbated the inequalities in society, especially for blue-collar workers and the underprivileged, and how government policies have made things worse for them. Please support us on our mission to bring you quality journalism.
In interviews with the Post nearly a year after the health crisis emerged, they explained how the poor fell further down the social ladder, how government policies made the situation worse, and shared their fears of a more unequal post-pandemic world.
Adans Wong was one of more than 20,000 Hongkongers who joined the expanding army of unemployed in February, just a month after the virus arrived.
“I had been living pay cheque to pay cheque before, so losing my job in the midst of a pandemic really hit me hard,” he said.
The 49-year-old had been working four to five days a week as a waiter at a restaurant making between HK$6,000 (US$774) and HK$7,000 a month but was seeing his hours steadily cut as social-distancing measures kept customers away.
