The Social Welfare Department has injected additional funding of $970,000 into the Tung Wah Group's CEASE Crisis Centre and the Caritas' Family Crisis Support Centre to strengthen support for people with emotional or family problems relating to the financial crisis.

Secretary for Labour & Welfare Matthew Cheung made the announcement on a visit to the CEASE Crisis Centre today.

The Government earlier allocated $1.2 million to the two centres to set up two 24-hour financial crisis emotional support hotlines. A total of 3,093 calls had been received from October 13 to December 31 last year.

The CEASE Crisis Centre also provides a 24-hour hotline, and crisis intervention and immediate outreach service for sexual-violence victims. It also offers 80 short-term accommodation places for victims of sexual violence and domestic violence, as well as those in crisis.

It handled 12,600 calls from January to September last year. The number of admissions for its new short-term accommodation service stood at about 180 in the first six months of operation from May 2008. It has also handled 140 sexual-violence cases since March 2007.

Zero tolerance

Reiterating that the Government will not tolerate domestic violence, Mr Cheung said the Government has allocated $1.58 billion to help domestic-violence victims and families in need this financial year.