HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
new General Purpose Stall licences would be issued, so as to accommodate more hawkers in the limited number of hawker stall sites available on the streets of Hong Kong. Almost all new fixed pitch licences are allocated to persons recommended by the Social Welfare Department.
MR. HU: Mr. Chairman, through you I would ask Mr. BERNACCHI, would a hawker site of only 12 sq. ft. not be too small?
MR. BERNACCHI: Mr. Hu, hawkers seem to have traded from such a site at least since 1935. The modern way of trading, of course, is for the hawker to erect a wooden stall on the site, and to stand not in the 4' x 3', but outside and sell from the 4' x 3' area that his wooden structure is erected upon. The only difficulty that I can see arises in the case where fruit is sold from a refrigerator, although I believe, I am not quite certain, there are refrigerators sufficiently small to be accommodated in a 4′ × 3′ site.
MR. HU: Mr. Chairman, I also want to ask Mr. BERNACCHI, through you, what does he mean by General Purpose stall? Is that a stall for selling fruit?
MR. BERNACCHI: No. The General Purpose stall is, as its name implies, a stall for general purposes, namely, to sell a considerable number of items that hawkers are permitted to sell according to the Hawker By-laws. In practice, most general purpose stalls, but not all, sell fruit.
MR. HU: What is the area of those stalls?
CHAIRMAN: A general purpose stall is 6 ft. x 3 ft.
MR. HU: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, according to Mr. BERNACCHI, this Council would be very strict about enlarging the area of a fixed pitch stall. Is that correct?
MR. BERNACCHI: The Council should be very strict, but it depends upon the co-operation of the Police. The Police have a lot of other duties to attend to and our own Hawker Control Force is limited in size and is confined, more or less, to certain areas in which on-street or off-street hawker markets have been erected.
MR. HU: Would Mr. BERNACCHI agree with me that the area is too small, and that it is very difficult to manage their business because the standard fixed pitch site is too small?
MR. BERNACCHI: I do not think so. The hawkers, for instance, on Canal Road are nearly all fixed pitch stalls and there have not been reports of quarrelling amongst individual hawkers. On the other hand,
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
there is always the difficulty of getting rid of rubbish. That is a formidable problem, because the hawkers decorate their stalls, say, with fruit, and the crates that the fruit is received in, what is to happen to them? In fact, the hawkers throw them away and it is for us, as an Urban Council, to clear up the litter. Also, of course, another problem is where to store goods that the stall is too small to display, and that also, as you know, has given the Hawkers Select Committee considerable concern. We have got various plans, rather than concrete ideas, on how to accommodate the hawkers more, but not by giving them the street to store their boxes on. In some cases, the hawkers are able to store their boxes and crates on an empty stall, and it is by informal agreement rather than anything else, we do not license this empty space so that it can be used by the hawkers surrounding it. Every case that comes before the Hawkers Select Committee is given individual attention.
MR. HU: I have a last supplementary, Mr. Chairman. Would the 4' x 3' area strictly apply in a hawker bazaar?
MR. BERNACCHI: Hawker bazaars are nearly all not fixed pitch hawker stalls. They are pedlar hawkers that have become static and are accommodated in a hawker bazaar, and each hawker bazaar is different. For instance, in the resettlement areas there are actual stalls erected for them, but on the streets a piece of the pavement is marked out on the ground, and normally they are not allowed to erect actual stalls on that site. They are there to occupy that site with a pole and two baskets. In other words, we are going in circles.
DR. BELL: Mr. Chairman, may I, through you, ask a question of Mr. BERNACCHI? I was interested in what he said about the rubbish being thrown by the hawkers on the streets. This Council, and I think the Select Committee, can require restaurants and cafes to provide bins for refuse and rubbish. Can the Markets and Hawkers Select Committees require hawkers to have a bin to put the rubbish in?
As acting Chairman of the Environmental Hygiene Committee, I have come up against the problem that apparently we have not got enough finance to provide enough bins all over the town, and it would seem to me that perhaps individuals could provide bins of that sort. Would the Hawkers Select Committee be able to do anything about that?
MR. BERNACCHI: I cannot say anything about the Markets Select Committee, but as for hawkers I think the rubbish is normally crates, and a crate does not readily fit into a rubbish bin. That is the problem.
DR. BELL: Mr. Chairman, again through you, could there perhaps be some liaison between the hawkers in a particular street, and the rubbish collection which goes on there, so that the hawkers can be asked to put their stuff in one definite area in the street for removal?
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