House pricing moderation and some other changes were promised by Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying on his fourth annual policy address to the citizens who are now losing faith on his ability to come up with possible solutions on the city's pressing issues.
Aside from the house pricing moderation, he also stipulated the changes in the working hours among workers in Hong Kong as well as his commitment to political independence on his decision making for the progress of the country.
According to the latest news, one of the two special administrative regions of China which also includes Macau, have been struggling with the increase of house prices since Leung sat in office three years ago. This was based from the Tuesday poll made by the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Program.
Legislative Council member and vice chairman of the opposition Labor Party, Lee Cheuk-Yan said that the people have the right to complain for big reasons. First, the Hong Kong citizens have to wait for an average three years and six months before they could own a public flat.
Second, they don't have standard working hours resulting to a big discussion on the payment schemes. This led to the third reason, the universal pension fund scheme remains debatable.
"If you live in private units, rents are so high that it can eat up 75 percent of your income. We don't see any improvement on this and can't expect anything from Leung because supply has gone down, waiting times have increased and wages haven't improved," Lee said.
Leung, on the other hand, explained that he has been working so hard to see good results to the reinforced measures that the government did to boost the home supply. They made 97,100 additional public housing units to expect in the next five years and 76,700 of these will be converted to renting housing units. The remaining 20,400 units will be subsidized sale flats.
He stated, "Our efforts over the past three and a half years have produced results. The housing supply has significantly increased and property prices and rentals have started to fall, reversing the perception that property prices and rentals can only go up ... We should continue to tackle the housing problem head-on and must not concede."
In terms of the working hours of the Hong Kong citizens, he has already established the regulations regarding the long hours needed at work. In fact, the city has the longest working hours in the world with an average of 2,300 hours every year.
Tommy Cheung, Liberal Party legislator, warned that if this issue will be not solved as soon as possible, there will be an expected catastrophe in the economy of Hong Kong. It is so clear that Leung has just to standardize the working hours needed per year to make this work.
"We already have [a] minimum wage and we've seen how it was reduced competitiveness in the work force. A couple of things could happen: if the economy turns bad, then the unemployment rate will turn higher."
Cheung added, "But when the economy is going great, like when we introduced minimum wages in 2011, then we see higher inflation and a lot of people not working in certain industries, such as restaurants."
