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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
MINUTES.
The Minutes of the meeting of the Council held on 4th May, 1965, were confirmed.
PAPERS.
The Chairman laid upon the table the following paper:-
Report on the work of the Urban Council and Urban Services Department for the month of May 1965.
MR. B. A. BERNACCHI : —Mr. Chairman, as Chairman of the Hawkers Policy Select Committee I must draw the attention of members of this Council to the item under Hawker Control Force on page 8 of the publicity report you have laid on the table. The Hawker Control Force must have the full backing of this Council because it is the disciplinary force engaged to carry out the work of this Council in respect to Hawkers and Street cleansing generally. Having said that I am concerned about the number of obstruction charges that have been brought, compared with the number of warnings of obstruction that have been issued. The number of obstruction charges that have been brought apparently amounts to 315 and there are another unspecified 242 summonses still pending, whereas the number of warnings amounts to 800. I have always regarded the Hawker Control Force as being the equivalent of country policeman in the United Kingdom, i.e., tactful persuasion, rather than legal action, and I should prefer to see the comparison between the number of warnings to the number of Court Actions very much higher, i.e., with some 550 Court Actions, I would have thought the number of warnings would be in the neighbourhood of 2,000. I can assure every honest Hawker Control Force constable that he has the full weight of this Council behind him when he takes legal action against a persistent offender, but this does not mean that he should strut about like a little tin god. He is part and parcel of the community of Hong Kong, not someone above the community, just because he is a Government servant. The trouble we have had with hawkers just recently is because no action could be taken in the past because the number of Hawker Control Force personnel was not enough and they have, not unnaturally, resented the action now. The hawkers must appreciate that they are only part of the whole community of Hong Kong, having duties as well as rights to discharge, and the Hawker Control Force constable must also appreciate that he is part of that community.
Mr. Chairman, I hope to see reported, in future, a far larger proportion of warnings than of legal actions.
MR. A. de O. SALES: -Sir, I declared to you my intention of making a statement at this time in my capacity of Chairman of the Urban Amenities Select Committee. There is no point in this Council tabling reports about what it does to provide the public with better beaches and other amenities in the summer if the traffic police is bent on undermining our work in this connexion. Sir, I agree wholeheartedly with my Colleague across the table when he spoke as Chairman of the Hawkers Select Committee about obstruction charges and warnings, but in a different light. I am disturbed, and very seriously so, by the efforts which the traffic police are making unduly, over week ends, at proximities to the public beaches, to prevent people from having reasonable access to them. I myself, Sir, have conducted a survey and have had the unhappy experience of receiving one of these warnings for no proper cause or reason. Therefore, Sir, I suggest to you that the traffic police can be better and more gainfully employed in the discharge of duties paid for by the tax-payer. I go even further, Sir, to suggest that you may wish to represent to Government that the public interest would be better protected if a Police Board were set up in Hong Kong to supervise and control the functions of the police force which do not seem to me in many respects to be adequately discharged.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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QUESTIONS.
(1) DR. R. H. S. LEE asked the following question:
Is the Chairman aware that there are settlers of Resettlement shops who are short of capital to start up their business again? What assistance can the Resettlement Department or any social welfare agency give to rehabilitate these cases?
THE COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT replied as follows:-
I am aware that persons eligible for the allocation of resettlement shops may experience financial difficulty in decorating their premises and starting up business. It was, I understand, for this reason that the policy was adopted of allowing transfers of shops to fellow-tenants. Often ex-pigbreeders and ex-cultivators, for example, who have been allocated shop premises, have neither the capital nor the experience to run a shop, but there is no objection to their transferring their allocations to other estate tenants. As regards shopkeepers being short of capital, I regret that the Resettlement Department is not in a position to operate a loan fund. On the other hand, there are a number of voluntary agencies active in this field. The Hong Kong Council of Social Service operates a Resettlement Estates Loan and Savings Association. Credit Unions are beginning to be established, and several other agencies (such as the Family Welfare Association) may make loans or grants of money in appropriate cases.
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