How district councillor is helping the community

Amid the shortage of sanitary equipment, the newly elected district councillor Jimmy Sham in Lek Yuen area has been distributing masks to the residents in his district. 

With most of its residents being elderly, Jimmy Sham is worried that such an old area would have a higher chance of coronavirus outbreak. “As the elderly are having poorer immunity than normal people, they are more likely to catch diseases. So if the coronavirus is spread here, that would be a big issue.”

However, elderly in the estate usually have less social resources to catch up information for buying masks. Ms. Chan is among them. The 64-year-old woman has reused her surgical mask for a week, and she was going to use it again tomorrow. "We really don’t have many left at home. And we need to spare some for my son because he needs to go out to work everyday."

"Some people have donated a few boxes of masks to us. We are figuring out how to distribute them in a relatively fair way, as we can't help them all," said the councillor.

In order to benefit more people, they unboxed all the masks and repacked them for every 10 masks. Instead of distributing the masks to all the residents, they registered for around 600 residents who have asked for help, and spare enough masks for them. 

Ms. Chan has got two packs, in a total of 20 masks, for her 3-people family. She was happy about the service of the new district councillor. "He is helpful as he knows we do not have enough masks."

However, the method of distribution has aroused dissatisfaction among the community. A 78 years old man complained that he did not know they were distributing masks, therefore he didn’t register beforehand.

"We have already tried our best to serve them as much as possible. But it is impossible to cater to everyone's needs. So far we have distributed around 20,000 masks in two weeks' time," said Jimmy Sham.