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an officer, during his leave of absence in England, is at present studying the application of statistics to various problems, but it is not only necessary to know how to deal with data, the data must first be collected and the existing statistical office confines its activities to wholesale prices which have only a general relevance to the fluctuations in the actual cost of living. The question calls for further examination. The Professor of Economics and Political Science at the Hong Kong University whose assistant is at present preparing a cost of living index has kindly offered me the assistance of his department in the conduct of any surveys that may be considered necessary.
223. The total number of workers in the registered factories and workshops represents only a fraction of the total working population. For the purposes of the Factories and Workshops Ordinance, 1937, "factory" means any premises or place wherein or within the close or curtilage or precincts of which any machinery other than machinery worked entirely by hand is used in aid of any industrial undertaking carried on in such premises or place, and "workshop" means any premises or place other than a factory wherein or within the close or curtilage or precincts of which any manual labour is exercised by way of trade or for purposes of gain in or incidental to making any article or part of any article, or altering, repairing, ornamenting or finishing or adapting for sale any article, provided that at least 20 persons are employed in manual labour in the said premises or in the close, curtilage and precincts thereof. Legislation as to hours and conditions of labour, however, is largely restricted to this fraction together with the unknown portion which is engaged in other industrial undertakings which are not registered.
224. The Factories and Workshops Ordinance, 1937, is a kind of omnibus ordinance lumping together various disparate matters from the age under which children shall not be employed in industrial undertakings to the provision of fire escapes in tenement factories and the notification of accidents. As it stands, the Ordinance creates a diarchy consisting of the Urban Council and the Protector of Labour who is the Chairman of the Urban Council, but may be any person appointed by the Governor to be Protector of Labour for the purposes of the Ordin- ance. The Urban Council is empowered to make by-laws defining the duties and powers of the Protector while the Protector is empowered generally to overrule the by-laws and recommendations of the Urban Council. As certain of these by-laws, as has been pointed out, represent the terms of International Labour Conventions to which the Colony has subscribed the possibility of their modification or suspension is unsatisfactory.
The power to
225. The Ordinance is defective in certain other respects. make by-laws preventing accidents is confined to factories and workshops, and industrial undertakings such as mines are excluded. The by-laws regarding the employment of women, young persons, and children, are confined to industrial under- takings and dangerous trades and have no reference to agricultural operations or domestic service. Thus we find the anomalous position of the Urban Council of Hong Kong purporting to prohibit the employment of females on underground work in mines in the New Territories which its inspectorate is inadequate to supervise and ignoring the employment of children at night as pages and bell boys and girls in hotels within a hundred yards of its council chamber.
226. Under the Ordinance the existing powers of the Council (and no additional powers have been taken or by-laws passed since the Ordinance was enacted) appear restricted in some directions and excessive in others. It is submitted that the Ordin- ance should be repealed and the provisions dealing with sanitary, hygienic, and structural conditions in factories incorporated in the Public Health (Sanitation) Ordinance No. 15 of 1935 already referred to. That Ordinance is already adminis- tered by the Urban Council. The Chairman of the Urban Council as Chairman of the proposed Town Planning Committee would control the design and siting of factories. It is submitted that the control of conditions of labour in factories is more properly part of the functions of the Labour Office, and that the relevant legislation, with any necessary amendments and additions, should be collected in a Labour Ordinance.
227. Matters connected with the proper fencing of machinery in factories with a view to protection against accidents and the notification of accidents, etc., should also belong to the Labour Office which presumably will be in control of workmen's