HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
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The proceedings of the meeting of the 22nd June, 1923, were reported to the Governor of that time, Sir Edward Stubbs; and a few days later the Colonial Secretary, Mr. A. G. M. (now Sir Murchison) Fletcher informed the Hon. Sir Shouson Chow and me that the proposal would be dropped, and that he advised the people in the rider-main districts to apply for meters which would be freely granted.
We thought at the time that, by following the Government's advice, the matter would end there. That that advice has been largely followed can be seen in the steadily increasing number of meters that have been applied for and installed since 1923. At this very moment, according to the reply given by the Hon. Director of Public Works to my question put at the meeting of this Council on the 4th August, 2,100 meters have been applied for but not yet installed in the rider-main districts. But for the difficulties which the people have, until quite recently, experienced in obtaining meters a fact borne out by the 2,100 applications still awaiting attention-more applications would have been made for them.
Now the Government has revived the question-in fact, has actually taken some action, without having produced more arguments to justify it, except that the large number of meters that have been applied for in recent years has made it necessary to make the change, for, according to the Hon. Colonial Secretary, "each new meter tended to destroy the balance of the 1906 arrangement." It would seem from this that the adoption of the advice of the Government of 1923 is now having an opposite effect to what was intended.
The views of the present Government on this important question are also at variance with those of Mr. Osbert Chadwick. In paragraph 20 of Sessional Paper No. 4 certain remarks of Mr. Chadwick on the rider-main system are quoted. They are these: "Its effect will be three-fold. Firstly, it will mitigate the evils of the intermittent system; and, secondly, it will be a permanent improvement, inasmuch as it will facilitate the detection of waste. Thirdly, it will greatly facilitate the voluntary introduction of meters." These remarks, and the debates in Hansard of 1903, give us the impression, if not conviction, that the rider-main system which was to be a "permanent" arrangement, was to be allowed to abolish itself by the gradual installation of meters.
Many people in the rider-main districts have had meters installed, and many more will apply for them, because they find the meter system so much more convenient than the rider-main system which is subject to periodical restrictions, entailing much hardship on the poor.
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