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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
would soon be given their market when reference was made to the subject by the Colonial Secretary in his Budget speech last year. This is what the official spokesman said:-"In New Kowloon, market exten- sions hold a prominent place, Shamshuipo, Kowloon City, and Kowloon Tong all receiving an allocation." And the result is like unto the answer of St. James: "It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away."
The Estimates Sub-Committee of the Sanitary Board, on which I was privileged to serve this year, recommended to the Government the erection of a public market within the Kowloon Tong Estate. Later, at a meeting of the Full Board on the 23rd July, 1929, a motion was unanimously adopted approving the proposal. When it is remembered that the question of public markets is peculiarly within the province of the Sanitary Board to consider, the rejection of the Board's recommendation to the Government is difficult of satisfactory explanation to those outside the secret councils of the Government.
In the opinion of residents of Tsim Sha Tsui, another matter of more or less urgency calls for immediate attention on the part of the Government. I refer to the children's playground. This also has been sympathetically touched upon by the Senior Unofficial Member. Residents of Kowloon begin almost to despair that children across the harbour will ever be considered worthy of the solicitude of Government in the provision of a suitable ground in a convenient locality where children could run and play about within an area free from the objectionable features to be found in the railed-in portion of the railway ground on Chatham Road dignified with the name of a "Children's Playground."
In the senior morning newspaper of the 10th September will be found a plaintive appeal on behalf of the children of Kowloon. I should not be surprised if it be that of some British mother vainly pleading for an amelioration of a condition not too creditable to the Colony in the matter of playgrounds at Kowloon. A brief extract from that letter may serve some useful purpose if, perchance, it escaped notice from those to whom the letter was designed to appeal. The writer condemned last year's saving of $22,000 on the proposed children's playground as "an eloquent and practical comment on the high falutin' sentiments expressed at the last Legislative Council meeting." The writer describes the Chatham Road playground as "drab, dusty and in the evening a coolies' spittoon; it is positively dangerous. It fronts a long stretch of straight road which offers a temptation to motorists, which, as a whole, they do not and cannot be expected to resist. The railings are about a couple of feet high, and take an active child of four some five seconds to scale. It is easy to 'save' money by allowing such a wretched place to go unim- proved."
A cognate subject is that of open spaces. Realising the interest which your Excellency has taken in the rapid growth of Kowloon,
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