Lawmaker questions timing of pension proposal and whether it will face changes under Hong Kong’s next government
Wong Kwok-kin calls decision problematic while No 2 official insists there have been discussions between incoming and outgoing governments
A pro-Beijing lawmaker who will join Hong Kong’s next Executive Council on July 1 has questioned whether the outgoing city leader’s proposal to scrap a pension offsetting mechanism will actually be implemented under the new administration.
“We don’t know what the incoming government will think at this moment,” Wong Kwok-kin of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions said on a RTHK radio programme on Saturday morning. He noted incoming leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor had earlier said she would scrap the mechanism.
The No 2 official Matthew Cheung Kin-chung who will remain in the role after June 30, said on Saturday that Lam is familiar with the Mandatory Provident Fund [MPF] offsetting arrangements – a controversial arrangement that allows bosses to claw back their contributions into workers’ pension funds to cover severance and long-service payments – and that there has been communication between the outgoing and incoming governments.