[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Nam-gu, Gwangju Metropolitan City (District Mayor Kim Byeong-nae) announced on the 26th that it will pilot a new form of social safety net, the mobile safety care service, to address the ongoing issues of increasing single-person households and solitary deaths among socially isolated households.
To this end, Nam-gu recently established mobile safety care service software in the district office's computer and communication rooms that automatically calls the mobile or landline phone of high-risk solitary death individuals if the phone has not been active for more than three days to check on their well-being.
If the welfare check call is not connected, an automatic notification is sent to the welfare staff working at the local administrative welfare center, who then visit the individual's home to personally confirm their status.
Nam-gu plans to provide this service starting today after explaining the purpose of the project to about 1,300 single-person households who are basic livelihood security recipients, near-poverty class, elderly living alone aged 65 or older, and middle-aged to senior high-risk one- or two-person households, and obtaining their consent to use the service.
A Nam-gu official stated, "Monitoring of home and outside activities is possible through mobile and landline phones, which has the advantage of drastically reducing ancillary costs necessary for building a social safety net and care. We plan to pilot the service until the end of the year to improve its shortcomings and focus all efforts on identifying additional eligible individuals."
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
