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ground floor to accommodate vegetable hawkers and I hope this proposal will have the support of the Urban Amenities Select Committee on the one hand and the Hawkers Select Committee on the other. With these remarks, Mr. Chairman, I have pleasure in supporting this motion.
(At the suggestion of the CHAIRMAN, a brief recess was held at this point)
MRS. E. ELLIOTT : Mr. Chairman, if anyone were to ask me how much I have done since I came on the Council, I should have to say in all truth that I have done a great lot of work, but have accomplished very little for the people of Hong Kong. Indeed, there are times when I feel I am just knocking my head against a brick wall. People quite rightly come to ask for help on their problems, and I often have to tell them that the matter does not come within our jurisdiction; or I have to tell them that the policy will not permit me to give any help. To say that the Urban Council is a democratic body is a mockery; most of the measures we suggest are watered down by the higher powers, until they become completely insipid. We struggle and exhaust ourselves to gain the tiniest bit of progress in our policy. But whichever way we try to progress we meet a money barrier. When I was a child, I used to like to scrape the bowl after my mother had made a cake. We on this Council are no longer children, but we are only able to get the scrapings for the people we represent. It is not necessary for me to say who gets the cake every time.
The results of our batterings on behalf of the low-paid labourers are a good example of my meaning when I talk about scrapings. These men have the handsome sum of about $195 a month, and if they are good boys they get an extra $2 a month, as a yearly increment. Now they are to be given an increase of thirty-odd dollars—very handsome, seeing that their pay increase is already long overdue. I wonder if this handsome increase was dictated by a power group that is studying the possible losses to its own families and business concerns if there should be a general rise in wages.
Recently we have been encouraged to try to persuade young hawkers to take up industrial jobs and labouring vacancies. We agree that it is better for them to have a regular job, as there are too many hawkers. But how can we in all conscience encourage them to take jobs when we know that they will be offered less than they can earn by hawking? If the big business people are all out to make a fortune, how can we blame the hawkers if they also want to make a fast buck?
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To hear some people talk about "these hawkers" always wanting to make more money, anyone would imagine that the builders, businessmen and Government Servants running around the Colony in cars, were solely bent on missions of mercy, and not likewise wanting to make a fast buck. If contractors and industrialists want to find labourers, they should stop trying to make vast fortunes in a short time, and offer a wage for a family to live on. Government policy seems to aim at protecting the big business man, when it should be protecting the workers. The other day I was reading our upper form history book for Hong Kong. I suggest that our Hong Kong Government either put these words into practice here, or have them removed from the textbook. This is what the book says, and I quote: "It was a long time before men realized that a nation's wealth depends on her people, and that Britain could not be really rich, if her people, especially her children were starved, diseased, and unhappy." The period referred to is one and a half centuries ago, but it seems that the Authorities here have still not learned this lesson.
I mentioned at the beginning that we have no real democracy. I would go even further and say that our citizens do not even have a voice, in spite of our "freedom of speech". When the people do speak out through their only organ of democracy, the newspapers, they are completely ignored, for the sake of vested interests. What about the outcry against the Telephone Company charges being raised, the atrocious bus services, and the failure of the new Primary School system, and here I would like to endorse all that Mr. LI Yiu-bor has said. Government has not studied the history books well enough. Perhaps they are too busy studying bank books! There has recently been an outcry, especially in the Chinese Press, about that controversial subject, off-course betting. I am no kill-joy, but I think that the argument "We are only legalizing what already exists" holds no water. Shall we legalize drugs and corruption because they already exist? Why not take the advice of a young schoolboy who recently wrote: "Why does the Hong Kong Government not give us some teaching over the radio to try to stop people from foolish betting, instead of encouraging it by making it legal?" Is it not time for us to find some healthy means of entertainment when so many of our young people are on the downward path? The bait is dangled before our eyes that it will bring more money into the Treasury. Money, money, money! Is money our only standard of ethics? There are plenty of stories in classical literature about men who sold their souls for money.
Vice always accompanies social injustice—so are we to legalize vice? The Social Welfare Department, which should deal with morals, is almost founded on gambling, sweeps and lotteries.
I was young, we spoke of betting as if it were something coarse and immoral. I find it strange that in Hong Kong it is regarded as a kind of culture.
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