THE POOR IN Hong Kong would be worse off if it wasn't for Wong Hung-sang.
For the past two decades, he has tirelessly championed the cause of the less fortunate, working to give them shelter and food, and to ease their suffering in a society where people are used to thinking about themselves first.
Mr Wong never set out to be a social worker. It was during his first job as assistant officer at the Correctional Services Department, then known as the Prisons Department, that he realised he needed to upgrade his academic qualifications.
'I knew I had the capability to do the job, but I watched other colleagues who had university degrees get better positions than me even though their performances were worse,' he said.
'That was when I knew I needed to go back to school, even though I didn't have an idea of what to study.'
He was also torn between the stability and security of a government job, and a lower income job that would allow him to study.
As fate would have it, an error made by one of his colleagues turned out to be the definitive factor for his departure.