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Q.-Alright now, what I want to know is, what is your experience of those Sanitary Inspectors, to make you fear that those men would act in such a way. Do you know that they have been receiving bribes wholesale, and secondly not been seeing that the regulations- of the law have been enforced in the past?
A. Well, this is what I have seen. I will mention one instance of what I have seen with my own eyes,-some conduct of his that was not good. I was at Yaunati,—
Q.-You talk of whom?
A.-Of an Inspector. I was there. At five o'clock I came back in a steam launch, I was sitting at the bow of the thing, when they collected the fares. He would not give his fare. He would not give any money, and the steersman said to the money collector "Get it from him, you need not be afraid." He was unwilling to give it, I do not under- stand English, but he was very fierce. Then, when the man insisted on getting the fare from him, he held out a $10 note. He did not give it to him, but held it in his hand. When the collector went up to get it from him, the steersman said to him “Go and take it from him, and give him change, and when he went up to get it from him, the pompan put it away again, and when we go near the landing he had not paid. Then we left the boat, and everybody had got off slowly from the launch. He did not want me to go up.
I went off the launch first. He wanted to arrest the steersman on the launch.
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Q. When did this happen?
A.-Several
years ago, three or four
years ago, it was.
Q-On the Ferry Boat?
A. Yes. I was very much dissatisfied with seeing this, and I stood at the wharf, and I said this is very much against right principles, to the man at the wharf. If he arrests him, I am willing to go as a winess. He did not arrest him, and he left and went away.
Q.-Did he pay his fare?
A.-No. He was even able to act like that, but it is not that other Inspectors are like that.
Q-You would not presumably because you saw one man misbehave himself on one occasion, that would not justify you in passing such a sweeping condemnation on other Inspectors?
Mr. Fung Wa Chun.-He has seen some more, you did not wait.
Mr. Lau Chu Pak.-What you have just said,—
Mr. Fung Wa Chun.-No, no, you did not like to apply that to all the Inspectors?
I
A. Yes, because I saw one like that, it does not follow that everyone is the same. thought that the character of the Inspectors was pretty good formerly, but I did not think that they would be so low as that, that a man would be so low as to be a rogue like that.
The Chairman. Have you got anything more to say, Mr. Li?
A.I wish to get some information on this point: Why is it the Government, when a shop is built, requires 15 feet space behind? Is the law that if it is 15 feet at the back,. it need not be open?