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very hard to bring about this improvement, and it is a source of great encouragement to them that their efforts have attracted the attention and received the approval of Members.
Mr. BERNACCHI made the point that the Hawker Control Force is in the process of establishing that same kind of relationship with hawkers as exists in England between the village constable and the village people. This analogy is quite apt, and I would like to affirm that we intend to go on improving the relationship between the Control Force and hawkers until it can be said, in all truth, to reflect that same degree of mutual respect and understanding which marks the traditional relationship between the village bobby and the villagers.
Nevertheless, the Control Force must continue to take firm action against those hawkers who persistently flout the law, and who behave with selfish disregard for the remainder of the community. If the improvement in relations between the Control Force and hawkers is to be lasting and beneficial, then it is just as important for all hawkers to respect the law as it is for the Hawker Control Force to respect the interests of hawkers.
Although the Force is now operating in about 70% of the main hawker areas and although the situation in many of them has improved greatly during the past year, there is certainly no room for complacency. I am therefore grateful to Mr. WONG for reminding us of some of the many tasks which must be tackled as a matter of urgency if progress is to be maintained. I agree with him that the potential hawker problem in Kwun Tong and Tsuen Wan requires our attention, and it is now receiving this in connexion with plans for extending the Hawker Control Force to those areas as soon as possible. I also agree with him that conditions are bad in the eight streets which he named in Hong Kong and Kowloon and I can assure him that remedial action will be taken in all these streets as soon as possible, and also in many other streets which I am sure he could have named if he had wished.
One of the areas referred to by Mr. WONG was Kowloon City. He will be glad to know that in early April the Hawker Control Force began operating in ten streets in that area. Special efforts have been made to win the confidence and co-operation of hawkers and already there has been a very marked improvement, due in large part to the steps taken by the hawkers themselves to clear the streets of obstruction, to tidy their stalls, and to reduce the size of their stalls to conform with the law.
Finally, I would like to say that I cannot agree with Mr. WONG'S assertion that the more he deals with hawkers and hawking matters, the less he feels he knows about them. In fact, Mr. WONG and other Members who serve on the Hawkers Select Committee—Mr. BERNACCHI, Mr. MARDEN and Mr. CHEONG-LEEN have between them a knowledge and understanding of hawker matters which is almost encyclopaedic, and which is of great value to the staff in dealing with this complex subject. If, therefore, there has been an improvement in the hawker situation over the past year, it is in no small measure due to the efforts of these Members who have given so much of their time to the work of the Hawkers Select Committee.
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DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC WORKS: — Mr. Chairman, as a new-comer to this Council may I say how stimulating I found the speeches of the Appointed and Elected Members.
Many Members spoke of Housing and Resettlement. This is a subject in which I have a very great personal interest, and I am fortunate in that I have already served a 10-year apprenticeship with the Housing Society. Like many of the Members who spoke I shall never be completely satisfied with the progress that is being made, and we in the Public Works Department will continue to seek ways and means to increase the speed and quantity of output.
I am greatly disappointed that we have failed to reach that elusive figure of 100,000 persons resettled during the year. The immediate cause—and I must apologise, it is third time this is said—was damage to plant and buildings under construction by Typhoon Wanda, followed by a general shortage of building labour. There are two major difficulties with which we are faced; one is the time required to form the sites, build the roads and service reservoirs, and provide water mains, sewers and stormwater drains. The other is the time required to clear some of the sites.
From the point of view of timing there is no great problem in building Resettlement Blocks for 100,000 or even 200,000 persons each year provided that we have the formed sites; but even at the speed at which contractors work in Hong Kong it can take anything up to three years to prepare some sites to receive buildings. On April 1st this year construction or site formation was in hand on 12 Resettlement Estates with a population potential of 575,000 people. In addition, we are now working on site layouts and development plans for a further 7 Estates with a population potential of 250,000. These figures suggest that we have now got on top of this problem of sites, and in the future we should be getting a steady stream of formed sites on which to build.
The second difficulty is that of clearances, particularly where sites earmarked for resettlement are occupied by factories on Crown Land Permits. As Members are well aware, long and protracted negotiations are generally necessary before the sites can be made available for development, and these delays have resulted in serious hold-ups in the
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