Tragedies Highlight Underprivileged Need More Help

The bodies of two brothers were found at Sau Mau Ping Estate

Underprivileged people in Hong Kong are falling through the cracks, a problem that has persisted for decades, but now has become more acute.

The latest is the death of two middle-aged brothers who apparently starved to death because they depended on their mother's care, but she had gone to hospital.

The siblings, 53 and 55 years old were intellectually challenged and were more dependent on their elderly mother in recent years but she had gone to hospital in May this year.

The brothers apparently died of starvation

The brothers' decomposing bodies were found in the flat at Sau Mau Ping Estate in Kowloon after officers came to investigate a strong odour.

Apparently the younger brother of the pair tried to visit the flat on June 8, but they did not let him in, and he tried to contact them by phone but they did not answer.

What more could have been done? Why didn't the mother say something to someone about her sons needing help? Or the younger son call the Social Welfare Department for help in helping his brothers? 

It is believed that the family did not reach out to any organisations or the government for assistance.

The department has now commissioned a 24-hour hotline to provide help on the phone and direct callers to organisations according to their needs. 

The hotline won't be ready until the end of the year, and professor Hector Tsang Wing-hong of Polytechnic University who suggested this along with other recommendations says these initiatives should be speeded up.

Tsang of Polytechnic University

"The department should learn a lesson... the Social Welfare Department needs to speed up the pace," he said. "It is a very unfortunately event that happened in the transitional period."

Tsang said the tragedy underscored that underprivileged elderly carers had little knowledge about accessing existing social services.

This is one of several tragic incidents that have happened in the last few months:

In June, firefighters found a severely dehydrated and weak 75-year-old woman bedridden with lymphoma in a flat in Happy Valley. That's because her younger brother and carer, who was 71, was found dead in the bathroom.

On May 15, a skeleton of a 69-year-old man was found in a public rental flat in Sha Tin after Housing Authority employees visited. The man apparently lived alone and there was no sign of a break-in.

A day earlier, a 59-year-old woman and her 86-year-old father were found dead in their home at Mei Foo Sun Chuen in Lai Chi Kok after a family member called for help after no one answered the door on a Mother's Day visit.

Civil society is fast disappearing in Hong Kong as many social organisations have been forced to close following the implementation of the national security law; sadly there will be more of these tragic incidents to come.