The Hawkers' Viewpoint
Press Release
Perhaps we use the cliché "the Hawker Problem" too glibly, without considering what we really mean. I have recently been asking myself what we DO mean by "the Hawker Problem".
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Is it the hawkers who present a problem to the community? Some of the Awking community will certainly say that is so. But I want to put it another way. It the hawkers who create the problem? Or might it not be rather that the au rities have not given the same thought to planning for this essential service that they have given to, say, planning for traffic, roads and housing?
It has been fashionable in the past to blame all our shortcomings upon the size of the population. We have never blamed the children becauso wo could not provide them with enough education; we have not blamed the workers because there are not enough buses to take them to work. Yet is it not a fact that all too often the community blames the hawkers because we have not provided a proper place for them to hawk? They pay their licence fee, and receive little but blame in return. Given better treatment, no doubt most of them would be happy to pay
more.
Some people talk as if Hong Kong could do without hawkers altogether. Yet under our present economic system, they are one class of people that 99% of our population cannot do without, not even for one day. With their small capital they cannot set up shops; with their small turnover they could not pay the high rants demanded in Hong Kong without raising their prices considerably and raising the cost of living, causing a demand for higher wages, and a consequent raising of prices of export goods.
The existence of hawkers has bolstered our economy, though who would think of praising them for that? The existence of hawkers has given a way of life to nearly a quarter of a million people who might otherwise present a threat of widescale unemployment.
In return, what does the community do for the hawkers? We spend enormous fortunes building necessary roads and flyovers to accommodate the volume of traffic that has outgrown the old highways. But on hawkers who serve the whole economy, we spend practically nothing; we curse them for causing a problem, rather. Although they have long outgrown (with few exceptions) the old market places and the old basket and pole system, we offer them no plan except to try to push them off the roads and sweep them into corners like sweeping dirt under a carpet. Yet daily we eat what their patient toil provides, ⚫ome winter cold or summer storm. It is not the hawkers who are a problem, but we who have allowed them to become a problem through failure to plun. If they were cars we would provide them with parks or metered spaces (the British are known for their kindness to dumb animals); but they are only people, so we give them less thoughtful treatment!
We can always drive them out of the way if it suits our purposes.
Theoretically very few hawkers have the right to remain static at all. A pedlar licence entitles them to carry two baskets on a pole. What chaos would result if all the 30,000 licensed pedlars (not to mention the unlicensed ones) suddenly took to the streets with baskets and poles? Impracticable though it is, we have not yet revokod this regulation because we are unwilling to offer an alternative. Hawkers have never ranked among the priorities for space, despitc their indispensability in our present economy.
By retaining a law which cannot be enforced, and failing to provide another which is practicable, we have plunged the hawkers into a state of insecurity and made them a proy for the unscrupulous. Until a hawker gets himself "established" in an area he lives the life of a fugitive. If ho is eventually accepted and duly onrolled when a clearance takes place, he then waits with uncertainty for the next clearance. His livelihood is in constant turmoil, as even a hawker of twenty
ears' standing may find himself suddenly romoved from his customers and without
future. This was seen recently in Kowloon City Bazaar; the result has been atastrphic, not only in material loss for the hawkers, but also in loss of confidence in the authorities in general and the Urban Council in particular.
But who cares? I remember the shock several years ago of hearing a enior official of the Social Welfare Department saying "We must not allow the hawkers to think they have any rights." And there lies the root of the problem. aving no rights, knowing they can be cleared out at any time, the hawkers grab hat they can and when they can; they can scarcely be blamed for leaving the treets in a mess; that is no concern of theirs for they are like nonads and Fugitives in our society.