Dear Pat,
It's been a while since the last time we talked. I MISS the days we were on the same debating team.
Last week, Annie, May, Jason and I represented our school in the inter-school debating competition against Happy Secondary School. The motion was ‘That Hong Kong is failing to take care of the poor’. We were on the affirmative side and we beat our opponent. Thrilling, wasn’t it?
Our opponent was quite a strong team (though our team is much stronger, I’d say.) They’d actually done a good job. They stated that the HK government and the non-government organizations were able to help the poor by providing job training and education to them. They even provided some examples, like the equal opportunity of receiving education in public schools and the establishment of job placement schemes.
Quite sensible arguments, really. And good poise, too, if you were there to watch them. So honestly, I was a bit worried if we could take ‘em down at first. They argued that with the job replacement scheme to provide work training, there’s a higher chance for HKers to get a job and escape from poverty. Also, the government’s been trying to close the income gap by providing basic education to every single child. They even mentioned the CSSA (Comprehensive Social Security Assistance Scheme) Wow! The long name really did scare us. Yeah, you should know it’s kind of a fund which helps the poor by bringing up their income to a certain level, right?
So it’s show-time! We thought that to judge whether HK’s failing to take care of its poor, we’d have to consider the EFFECTIVENESS of what the government’s done to fight against poverty rather than just looking into whether she’s done something to ease the poverty problem. HAHA! A very STRONG point, right? We found that it helps a lot with developing our arguments.
We said that HK’s failing to take care of its poor because we’re talking about EFFECTIVENESS. Though HK’s economy’s getting better, the unemployment rate’s still standing high and it proves that the job training schemes don’t help the poor a lot. We’ve got to say, the truth speaks for itself.
And back to the point of CSSA. In fact, the payments are NOT sufficient to cover the poor’s needs. 80.4% of the recipients agree with that. Many cut back their food to save the money up and some of them said they ate 2 meals or less a day. All these show that CSSA’s not helping a lot and make our rebuttals persuasive.
Apart from those, the huge income gap is another problem that HK’s failed to tackle. As there’re a lot of monopolies ruling the market, the prices of goods, including those of necessities, are unreasonably high. The expenditure of low-income families rockets so the poor become even poorer. (Hey did you study Economics? I find these concepts a bit hard to follow, anyway.) However, the government does nothing about it. HK’s definitely failing to take care of the poor.
You do think our team’s arguments are stronger, don’t you? I guess the reasons why we won were that the Negative couldn’t rebut our arguments that the effectiveness of the schemes launched by the government is unacceptably low and, well, of course Annie, our second speaker’s done a terrific job. She beats all in manner and method. Bravo! Annie was even awarded the BEST debater in the competition! Didn’t you get the exact same award last year? Envy…
Alright. So much for that. What do you think about the competition? Anything we should improve on? I really wish you were there to see our performance. Anyway, I guess I’ll see you this summer. Write soon.
Yours,
Chris