Financial Secretary apologises for eVoucher chaos amongst elderly queuing in HK

Financial Secretary Paul Chan has apologised yet again for the chaos among elderly citizens who were forced to queue up for hours in the heat just to re-submit their eVoucher applications last week. Many elderly residents who submitted paper forms encountered issues and did not receive their first batch of eVouchers. Hundreds of them even queued up earlier at Pioneer Centre, Mong Kok to seek advice and resubmit their applications.

Chan said that as a lot of citizens went to the programme's office at Mong Kok to complete necessary procedures before receiving the money, and this took them longer to complete the registration. As such, Chan apologised for the inconvenience caused and said increased manpower has been deployed to handle the cases. He also shared that opening three extra services centres at Central, Tai Po and Tuen Mun to handle the registrations, ensured that citizens did not need to take too long to complete the process.

The first batch of HK$2,000 electronic consumption vouchers was distributed on 1 August to citizens who completed electronic registrations before 17 July, while about 800,000 eligible citizens who completed electronic registrations between 18 July and 14 August 2021 and all paper registrations received the money on 1 September. 

Asked by reporters on his views towards the impact the the eVoucher programme, Chan said the retail market had significantly improved, particularly the F&B industry. He added that the eVoucher programme could help revive Hong Kong's economy. As four service operators, namely Octopus, Tap & Go, Alipay HK and WeChat Pay HK, rolled out plenty of discounts or promotional offers to attract citizens to use their services. Chan said this further enhanced the sentiment among citizens and they were more willing to shop. 

Chan also said that there were about thousands of citizens who had not completed resubmitting required information as of 7 September, but the service centres can accommodate these applications. Lastly, Chan said the government will review the e-voucher programme to decide whether it will take place again in the following year. 

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