Care grows for disabled at Hong Kong vegetable plant
Processing boss offers introduction to world of work in a competitive business that sows seeds of responsibility for both colleagues and clients
In the middle of a space for processing produce, six workers are focused on their tasks at hand – peeling, chopping, mincing vegetables. They’ve been here since before dawn.
One of them is 52-year-old “Ah Ming”, who has a severe intellectual disability.
“When Ming first joined he couldn’t talk at all,” says John Wong Gee-chung, business manager of Tung Wah Group’s Enterprise Vegetable & Fruit Processing and Supply Service.
In fact, Ming was bullied by his peers, who had milder intellectual disabilities. “They called him stupid,” Wong says. “That was an interesting situation to deal with.”
But Wong stood up for Ming, and helped him come out of his shell. “It has taken years, but he can now speak up for himself if anyone was to say anything mean to him.”
Wong’s operation buys vegetables and fruit from farms and wholesalers, and then processes them according to what each client – which includes hospitals, NGOs, commercial caterers – needs. “For example, many old people can’t really chew their food, but cooks find it too time consuming to chop up all these vegetables, so we do it for them.”