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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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What effective plan is the Department proposing to clear all the squatters from our Estates?
THE COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT replied as follows:-
According to the findings of a hawker survey conducted at the beginning of 1970, a total of some 12,000 structures had been counted within the limits of 24 resettlement estates. Systematic and stringent containment action adopted since then, has successfully kept the situation from deterioration. Of the 12,000 accounted for, only 2% are partially used for domestic purposes.
As Mr. Hu will point out in a later reply, the situation came about partly because there was the lack of built-in marketing facilities in the resettlement estates which forced our acceptance, right from the beginning, of hawkers in the estates as part of the way of life, to meet the social needs of the tenants. Many of these hawkers do hold pedlar hawker licences issued by this Council, but the inadequacy of manpower to enforce the provisions of the Hawker By-laws gave rise to a favourable situation for pedlars to remain static and gradually to enlarge their encroachments on the sites they occupied, and to increase the stalls or crates they use to display their paraphernalia and to reinforce the awnings they used to cover their heads and wares.
Such a situation deteriorated during the disturbances in 1967 when the limited manpower that was available had to be diverted to other more urgent problems threatening the survival of our community as a whole. The hawkers have thus had a free hand for a time to consolidate themselves into a conglomeration of illegal structures on the ground. It was not until October 1969 when tidiness teams specially designed to discipline intolerable encroachments in the estates were provided. The introduction of such tidiness teams, coupled with the determined efforts on the part of the Resettlement Department to carry out a systematic programme of effective disciplinary action at a very difficult time, has made it possible for the department to prevent the situation from deteriorating further. The measures so far taken include:-
(a) to insist on a limit beyond which awnings or shades jutting out from shops would be forcibly cut back, if not complied with after prolonged persuasion;
(b) to demolish any new illegal structures discovered, and to offer a site in a licensed area for such domestic occupants who could satisfy me that they were genuinely homeless;
(c) to continue consultations with the Hawker Control Division of the Urban Services Department with a view to working out specific plans for implementing the Urban Council's Hawker Policy in the Resettlement Estates. This involves initially the planning and building of modular markets in certain Resettlement Estates. When these have been built, hawker conglomerations will be cleared and the hawkers moved into the modules to operate as stallholders;
(d) in consultation with several Government departments to study the problem in depth, and work out a workable plan for the provision of comprehensive shopping and marketing facilities to meet the reasonable needs of the communities in each estate or group of closely-built estates.
I might add that action on (a) and (b) above has been going on for over a year now. (c) is nearing completion and I sincerely hope the result of these efforts can be clearly seen within the near future. In respect of (d), we owe the initiative for it to His Excellency the Governor's personal intervention, after his visit to several resettlement estates last year. An inter-departmental working party has already been set up and has been fully occupied on it. It is yet too early for me to say when we may see the fruits of their hard labour.
May I crave the Council's indulgence at this stage to pay my personal tribute in public to the courage and devotion to duty on the part of certain members of my staff who have been assigned to this very unpleasant task. Many of you here today may have read in the press report this morning that certain members of my staff were chopped yesterday. This is not the only time. In fact, since March we have had ten cases of such treatment.
MR. NG:- Mr. Chairman, the second part of my question says "Can you justify the failure of the Department to stop this practice at an early stage?" It appears to me that the Commissioner is trying to pin-point all the huts as hawkers but I understand some of the huts are not hawkers at all, they are illegal structures. Why were they not pulled down when they were first built?