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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
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THE COLONIAL SECRETARY, in reply, stated-(a) The Govern- ment has caused full enquiries to be made into the occurrences referred to in the first part of the Honourable Member's question. The shooting near Jardine's Corner was carried out by experienced Police Officers as the result of a complaint from a Peak resident of the danger to children from the presence of so many unmuzzled dogs in that neighbourhood, and the Government much regrets that by an error of judgment the shooting took place in the presence of children and that one child received a slight scratch apparently from a ricochet or a piece of stone. Orders have been issued that every possible care is to be taken to avoid the shooting of dogs in the presence of children, but it is obvious that the presence of spectators cannot always be avoided. The Government much regrets the necessity for undertaking the unpleasant duty of shooting dogs, but this necessity is forced upon it by the wholesale disregard of the law by dog-owners in this Colony. Among these law-breakers are to be numbered many Peak residents. It must be within the knowledge of all Honourable Mem- bers that, even since the occurrences referred to, dog-owners on the Peak and elsewhere still permit their dogs to roam about unmuzzled. As to the necessity for drastic action on the Peak as well as elsewhere it does not seem necessary to add anything to the bare statement of the fact that no less than 20 dogs from the Peak have been reported to the Police as having bitten people since the 1st January, 1926, that there were 184 reported cases of persons being bitten by dogs in Hong Kong Island since that date, 11 reported cases of rabies and 11 reported cases of hydrophobia. The risk of the terrible disease of hydrophobia arising from the presence of unmuzzled dogs in a Colony infected with rabies appears to be quite inadequately appreciated.
(b) With regard to the second part of the Honourable Member's question the Muzzling Regulations will be enforced by prosecution of owners, capture of dogs when this is practicable and can be effected without undue risk of danger to the Public Servants employed, and by shooting. As regards the future, the Government is determined that dog-owners shall not, by their disregard of the law, imperil the lives of others and proposes, after this public warning, to give orders for the most rigorous enforcement of the law with a view to the extermination here, as in other law abiding countries, of the scourge of rabies and the danger of hydrophobia.
HON. MR. D. G. M. BERNARD-Arising out of the replies to my questions I should like to ask (1) what experience is considered necessary before Police Officers are entrusted with the duty of shooting dogs and (2) what weapons are used.
THE COLONIAL SECRETARY-I ask that notice may be given of these questions.
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