Society

Today, Pun Git-fong, 90, doesn't take a nap with the TV on like usual. Instead, on this cloudy afternoon, she puts on her old blouse, closes the door and starts an arduous five-minute journey down the stairs from the fifth floor to the ground floor. Her neighbours are waiting for her. They are about to rally. More than 30 residents of Tai Hang Sai Estate, Hong Kong's last private housing estate for low-income families, are protesting a redevelopment plan that has been in the works for more than six years. The residents, many of whom have lived here for decades, say both the developer and the government are ignoring their needs and failing to communicate transparently.  Residents want to be given a place to live during the redevelopment, which is expected to last five years. Currently, they’ve been told they need to find their own housing. The crowd, mostly seniors, chants: "One house for one house; relocation needs common agreement. We only want to enjoy the old age; we don't want to drift from place to place." "Don't toss about the elderly; government helps placement,” they shouted. Established in 1965, Tai Hang Sai Estate offered shelter to tenants who lost their homes during the 1953 Christmas day fire in  Shek Kip Mei. The fire, which destroyed the entire estate and caused 3 deaths and 51 injured, brought the issue of safe public housing policy to light.  However, Tai Hang Sai Estate is not qualified as one. The British Hong Kong government offered a discount to developer Hong Kong Housing Corporation Limited (HKHCL) to buy the land for estate construction in 1961, which classified the site into private property.  "Either Hong Kong Housing Authority or any other Hong Kong authorities could manage the estate," says 64-year-old Tam Kwok-kiu, the former District …

After the close of business on Dec. 8, Roy Lam took down the sign listing his restaurant as Type A and put up a Type B notice. “There was no choice other than closing for good,” said Lam, the manager of Agape Garden, a small restaurant located in Sham Shui Po. Starting tomorrow, type A modes of operation of restaurants would be cancelled, and diners who do not meet the exemption policy will be required to scan the QR code of the restaurant using the LeaveHomeSafe, a government contact tracing app during the pandemic. “We made it to the last day,” Lam said. The Agape Garden was not the only restaurant that was forced to use this mobile app from Dec. 9. With LeaveHomeSafe adding the function of connecting to the Hong Kong health code, the government asked customers to scan QR codes using the app before entering every type of restaurant. This policy is set to meet Beijing’s standard on COVID-19 prevention and reopen the board with mainland China. However, about 500,000 Hong Kong residents still don’t have a smartphone in 2020, according to government statistics, and complaints also arose due to the deficiencies in arrangements for exempted people and private concerns. Before the policy went into effect, there were four modes of operation of catering premises in Hong Kong. Type A restaurants had the loosest COVID prevention methods, they accepted customers not to leave their personal information, while the remaining types of restaurants were asked to collect the information by paper or the LeaveHomeSafe app. The trade-off was that type A premises could not allow diners to eat in the restaurant after 6 p.m., and no more than two people were allowed at a table, compared with four in other types. Though there were more restrictions on the operations …

Hong Kong added nine countries with Omicron cases, including Australia and Canada, to the city’s high-risk group starting Wednesday over fears of the heavily mutated Covid-19 variant.  Under the tightened requirements, only Hong Kong residents who are fully-vaccinated and hold a recognised vaccination record can enter the city from countries in the high-risk group, which already includes the United States. Arrivals have to undergo a 21-day quarantine in a designated hotel instead of 14 days. Alice Chan Lai-sim, 66, a retiree who has lived in Sydney for 26 years, said she and her husband canceled their plans to return to Hong Kong to visit her relatives during the Christmas holidays due to the new arrangement.  “Though I have had two shots of AstraZeneca in Sydney before, I still have to quarantine in a designated hotel for 21 days and conduct six tests during quarantine in Hong Kong,” she said.  Her husband, Duncan Ip Wai-kwong, 69, who works in the IT industry, said they are also uncertain about the spread of Omicron in the city.  Hong Kong confirmed three imported Omicron cases discovered in arrivals during hotel quarantine.  “There are fewer Omicron cases in Hong Kong compared to New South Wales. However, Hong Kong still shows potential danger to travellers like us as most of the Omicron cases found in Hong Kong quarantine hotels that we have to stay in,” Ip said.  New South Wales, where Chan and Ip live, has recorded five Omicron cases.  On Sunday, the World Health Organization designated Omicron a “variant of concern” days after it was first reported from South Africa on Nov. 24.  There is little information on the heavily mutated variant, as the world waits to see if current vaccines will hold up. "Hong Kong's very stringent system of boarding, quarantine and also testing …