HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
MR. WILFRED S. B. WONG:-Mr. Chairman, the last Speaker, Mr. Li Yiu-bor, has always been gracious enough to lavish praise on eloquent speakers in previous years. I will have no difficulty in drawing your attention to the wit and wisdom which characterize Mr. Li's speeches, and to this year's particularly with a religious flavour.
This is the 8th occasion on which I have had the opportunity of reviewing the work of the Urban Council and this time, in relation to its Statement of Aims for 1968, and it is probably my last annual speech.
As you may recall, as a recorder of the prolificness of the Members of this Council in terms of the number of pages of the Hansard for the last few years, I would like to say that, although the number of pages has fallen from 742 in 1965 to 531 in 1966, this is a good sign that we are talking less and doing more.
In conformity to my principle of specialization, I shall speak on hawkers, markets, food and food premises, and environmental hygiene which fall within the purview of the Select Committees on which I am serving. This does not mean that I am not interested in other functions of the Council. It is a recognition of the fact that other Members of the Council have devoted a great deal of time on those subjects and can make better contributions than I can.
Hawkers
Hawking is as old as time. The world's first trader was a hawker. The problem of the world's oldest trade is as difficult to solve as that of the world's oldest profession. That is why the work of the Hawkers Select Committee is most difficult and therefore most challenging.
I hasten to add that the difficulties of the Hawker problem are there, not because but in spite of our able Chairman of the Hawkers Select Committee.
I have delved into the Hawker Problem for nearly eight years and made seven annual speeches the contents of which may now be crystallized as follows:
Although hawking has to be accepted as an economic institution in Hong Kong, as a growing modern metropolis we cannot adopt a policy other than to contain it.
This is made evident by the fact that as population and traffic are growing at a fantastic rate, the streets are fixed and limited in width.
Apart from congestion of thoroughfares there are the problems of fire hazards and health risk. The Health Authority is put in an extraordinarily critical position if they have to accept the dilemma when meat, fish, poultry and certain food were sold in conditions under which cleanliness was disregarded.
There is also a point of residents' rights of peaceful living. Why are residents on designated streets singled out? Is it because they are meek?
One of the most important decisions this Council made is that no permanent cooked food licences have been issued in the last ten years and that existing licences will be reduced in number as the licensees pass away.
On the question of other fixed pitched and pedlar hawkers, the problem is more complicated since, although they should be contained in the general interest of Hong Kong any drastic measures will put them out of work and the total number of their licences is 33,619 as of October 31st, 1967. On the other hand, I have reported in a personal survey I made on hawkers in Bowrington Road, which is typical of a hawker street in Hong Kong, that I found 80% of the hawkers were able-bodied which could be absorbed by industry. This is one of the reasons why Hong Kong has the lowest unemployment rate and many people are inclined to say that Hong Kong has no unemployment.
There is an old economic theory that the hawker is an unproductive middleman and that the worker in industry is productive. This, of course, is not true according to no less an authority than Alfred MARSHALL. But from an overall point of view we should encourage hawkers to become workers.
Another policy that has been established is that whenever the hawker and his family is dependent on a Fixed Pitch Stall, he or she is allowed to renew the licence or be resited and even to be succeeded by members of the family.
If we accept the Fixed Pitch Stalls as fixed and pedlars as moving or movable then the scope of the problem is reduced.
I must warn this Council that we must not embark on any measures which will make the pedlar hawkers more permanent, otherwise, we will have difficulty in resiting them or improving the conditions of the districts, or even improving their own economic standard as eventual market stall-holders. I think the re-siting of Kowloon City on Nam Kok Road is a case in point, which happened in the last few days.
How do we settle the pedlar hawkers who have become fixed for years by default of the Authority? I do not know the answer for those hawkers selling cloth or other piecegoods. I do know the answer for vegetables, fish, and fresh fruit hawkers. The answer is to absorb them into a market or a hawker bazaar, and promote them to market stall-holders. Why and how should we build more or better markets? This brings me to my next subject-Markets.
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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL