13
34. The Chairman of Urban Council informs us that the Urban Council is proposing to Government the erection of concrete stalls of approved hygienic pattern at Government expense to serve as cooked food-stalls in certain places and to be let out to suitable licensees. It appears to us these might with advantage be erected, if the cost would not be excessive, in some of the open spaces to be devoted to hawkers markets in the scheme already outlined. We recommend that Govern- ment give favourable consideration to these proposals and it appears to us likely that the rents receivable on such stalls would represent a fair return on the outlay.
35. If the proposals made in Section IV above are accepted, it follows that itinerant hawkers will no longer be allowed to carry on their trade from place to place but will be confined to the space allotted to them. They will then be itinerant only in the sense that they must be able to collect all their goods and receptacles, carry them off on a pole on the termination of the day's business, and bring them back on the following day. The description of them as itinerant hawkers will therefore no longer be appropriate and we suggest that in future they simply be known as "hawkers (fixed pitch).'
36. There are, however, certain goods which householders may find it useful to have sold at their doors. We accordingly recommend that a new class of licence called a Pedlar's Licence be instituted. Pedlars would be allowed to sell from door-to-door in certain areas specified on their licences. The kinds of goods which, it seems to us, pedlars might be permitted to sell are :-
Brooms
Feather dusters Small hardware
Small haberdashery
Curios
Itinerant hawkers.
Pedlars.
Baskets
Rope and string
Bamboo ware
Brown paper.
37. We consider that newspaper hawkers should come under the same regulations as hawkers generally and that they should be confined to definite pitches. They constitute, however, the only exception which we are prepared to recommend to hawking in the centre of the city and other special places. (Vide para. 21 above.)
38.
Newspaper hawkers.
hawkers.
Licences for the sale of tobacco are issued by the Superintendent Tobacco of Imports and Exports, whose general policy, we learn, since 1931, has been to issue no new tobacco hawkers licences. In 1981 there were about 600 such licences: at present there are only 80 or 90. We are in favour of the continuance of the S.I.E.'s policy of restriction, but we consider that all hawkers licences should be issued by the Urban Council and that this should apply also in the case of such tobacco hawkers licences as are still extant. Reference to the S.I.E. could of course be made by the Urban Council, if necessary, before renewal of licences.
VIII.-CLASSES OF GOODS.
39. In order to ascertain what kinds of goods could in future be omitted from the list of goods which hawkers are at present licensed to sell, in view of the limited spaces which will be available if our proposals