In the Budget, the Financial Secretary proposed a “three-month plus three-month” moratorium on rent-chasing. During this period, landlords might not pursue rent-chasing temporarily, hoping to help small businesses take a breather and avoid the epidemic. After the proposal was put forward, it caused a big uproar within the government, with strong opposition from high-level officials, and the Executive Council was reopened following the meeting.
In the end, the Financial Secretary repeatedly compromised and shortened the moratorium on rent recovery to only three months to ease the financial difficulties of some landlords due to this policy.
I have talked to several Legislative Council members privately, and they all felt that, why do the top government officials still have so much energy to pursue the proposal of suspending rent recovery, instead of focusing on the anti-epidemic work?
The epidemic in Hong Kong is still in the outbreak stage. More than 200 people die every day due to illness. Patients are forced to explode emergency rooms, hospitals, and designated clinics for COVID-19. Suspension of rent-chasing is not an earth-shattering policy, and it is only a drop in the bucket for the dying retail and catering industries; but looking at it in reverse, the top government officials have such a good energy to pursue and kill the proposal to suspend rent-chasing, if they can spend the same spirit and effort To address the medical run, the situation may improve slightly.
Recently, two of my friends’ elders passed away due to new coronary pneumonia. One was in the intensive care unit of a government hospital. After being transferred to the general ward, he passed away suddenly following being transferred to the general ward. Another friend’s father died suddenly when his condition seemed to be improving slightly following being diagnosed and staying at home for treatment. It’s heartbreaking to hear this news. The key background of the death of a friend’s elder is that under the condition of medical run, it is not so easy to get into the hospital;
Another friend’s elder was diagnosed. She felt uncomfortable in the middle of the night and called Baiche to the hospital. After the initial diagnosis, the doctor believed that her condition was not serious and she did not need to be admitted to the hospital, but she felt that she should be sent to the community isolation center for isolation. The friend’s elder waited in the emergency room for 18 hours. Although he might not wait to be admitted to the hospital, he might not wait to be sent to the isolation center. The situation that the elder saw in the emergency room was like a disaster. Of course, there were countless patients. The scene was like a war, and the chaos was unimaginable. After waiting for more than ten hours, she finally got a bed for her to rest for a while. But there is still no medical support, and of course no medicine or food. Friends and elders were impatient in the emergency room, and finally the hospital gave her a wristband and let her go home.
I suggest that the high-level officials of the SAR government should not spend any more energy on chasing and suspending rent recovery, because compared with the current epidemic situation, this is only a minor detail. Some might say that this is a matter of principle, which interferes with the free market. But Hong Kong is facing a severe war, and the fact that senior officials are still sitting there every day talking regarding principles can only show that the top government officials are extremely bureaucratic. If so.
The second is to suggest that the high-level officials of the SAR do not need to hold a press conference every day to talk regarding things that everyone knows. They should go to the A&E department, learn from the leaders of the Liaison Office, go straight to the front line, and understand the difficulty of admission. If they can do this, they will know that the import of hundreds of Mainland medical staff to Hong Kong is actually not enough. It may be necessary to import 7,000 Mainland medical staff as previously estimated by the Hospital Authority, which is enough to cope with the current daily number of 20,000 medical staff. A blowout disaster with multiple confirmed cases. The problem is that the SAR government is hesitant and not decisive enough to quickly import medical care from the mainland. Now that the epidemic has spilled over into Hong Kong, the mainland has also begun to break out, and medical care is desperately needed, whether a large number of medical care can come to Hong Kong is a big question mark.
The third is to advise the high-level officials of the SAR to understand that it is very difficult for people with confirmed cases to seek medical treatment. If there is no personal experience mentioned by friends, I don’t know how helpless citizens who have been diagnosed are. At present, more than 20,000 people are diagnosed every day, and most of them have mild symptoms. But in the cases I have come across, especially the elderly, mild symptoms can suddenly turn into severe ones, and eventually lead to death. Therefore, even if the symptoms are only mild following the diagnosis, everyone dare not take it lightly and want to seek medical treatment. But going to the emergency room or waiting for the government’s COVID-19 clinic is a complete disaster. If you go to the A&E department for mild symptoms, you will not be admitted to the hospital. If you make an appointment to see the COVID-19 outpatient center, if you are not in a high-risk group, you will not be able to see a doctor.
The government has done some things recently, and the situation has indeed improved, but it is still very far from solving the problem. When you have friends or relatives around you who are diagnosed and try to ask the government for help, you will know that it is actually difficult to compare. With limited resources, the government can only choose people to rescue, and can only rescue those who seem to be in extreme danger first, and as a result, most people are ignored.
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Lu Yongxiong
