Installation of Elderly-friendly Facilities in Schools to Cater to Ageing Teaching Workforce and Those with Mobility Issues

Mr Speaker, the Ministry of Education (MOE) includes barrier-free accessibility enhancements, including lifts, whenever new schools are built or existing schools undergo major upgrading. About 70% of our Government primary and secondary schools are currently fitted with lifts.

The remaining schools would be provided with lifts over the next five years, either as part of their scheduled major upgrading works, or else, as a special lift upgrading programme.

I thank the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the reply. I just wish to know, when lifts are built, are the teachers consulted on the locations where the lifts are to be built? Is there any consultation or review with the teachers in the school before it has been planned to be built?

Sir, I thank the Member for the supplementary question. Yes, certainly. We not only consult the teachers. We also look at the demographics, the student profile and the teaching needs availability and requirement of the people who work within the school as well as those who use the facilities. We will continue to do this to ensure that it provides as much as possible barrier-free accessibility to all the stakeholders.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I just wish to highlight that one or two of the schools, they built lifts near to the gym. A gym is supposed to be where students exercise and they are supposed to be climbing the stairways. But instead the lifts are built alongside and not at the mainstream classrooms' column. So, I just wonder whether a lot of consultation have gone in before even planning the lifts' location.

I thank the Member again for the supplementary question. I think this is a very specific case. I will get further details from the Member. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, this is something that we always look out for. We speak to the teaching community in the school and, at the same time, there may be issues of greater priority that we want to tackle in certain schools, which I may be able to share with the Member later.