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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
MR. FORSGATE:--Mr. Chairman, I am surprised to learn that after all these years only now are they getting around in Select Committee to make the hawkers clean up their mess. How does the Committee propose to enforce this? This is surely the nub of our filth in Hong Kong?
MR. BERNACCHI: All enforcement depends upon adequate provision of staff in the way of Hawker Control Force or the Police Force personnel being made available to the Urban Council to enforce these By-laws. I only say that apart from the Chairman of the Urban Council himself, as Chairman, and as Director of Urban Services, there is also a very senior Police Officer on the Hawker Policy Committee and presumably, if between them, they cannot manage to enforce these By-laws on the ground, then they would have objected even to the introduction of the proposed new By-laws.
MR. T. S. Lo:--I am sorry, I didn't quite get that. May I ask a supplementary Mr. Chairman? Are special arrangements for extra staff being arranged by the Sub-Committee?
CHAIRMAN:--This has nothing to do with the Sub-Committee or this particular question Mr. Lo, but the Department is looking into this.
MR. T. S. Lo:--I beg your pardon?
CHAIRMAN: ---The Department is studying this problem and hopes to have an answer fairly soon on this.
MR. HILTON CHEONG-LEEN: --Mr. Chairman, are steps being considered by the Resettlement Department to provide or to require Hawkers to have dustbins in the reordering process of hawkers into new sites along the lines suggested in the reply by Mr. BERNACCHI?
MR. BERNACCHI:--The Hawker revised By-laws will apply to hawkers generally. For the sake of convenience, hawkers in resettlement estates are being looked after by the Resettlement Department, but the By-laws as By-laws are the same.
MR. CHEONG-LEEN:--Mr. Chairman, my question was that since we don't know when these By-laws will be passed, and pending their introduction, would it be possible for the Commissioner for Resettlement to consider whether or not some of these arrangements as indicated by Mr. BERNACCHI couldn't be introduced in resettlement estates?
COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT:--I think this is certainly a good idea, Mr. Chairman, and we will look into it. But Mr. CHEONG-LEEN himself knows the situation on the ground in these resite bazaar areas and that is that the stalls are rather close together. You find the same problem as you find perhaps in the old Mark I and II
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rooms, domestic rooms, that is, there is hardly room for dustbins. But we can look into it.
MR. CHEONG-LEEN:--In places like Tsz Wan Shan where the reordering arrangements are so well taken care of Mr. Chairman, certainly there is room for introducing this even before the By-laws are passed. Could I ask one other supplementary; of Mr. BERNACCHI, Mr. Chairman? When does he anticipate that these By-laws can be passed?
MR. BERNACCHI:--I think that particular question has come up before, indeed, in Mr. CHEONG-LEEN's time as Chairman of the Policy Select Committee. I can only say that it is in the hands, and has been for a long time, of the Legal Draughtsman and for my part I hope it will be introduced sometime this year.
MR. CHEONG-LEEN:--By way of clarification, Mr. Chairman, if I were Chairman, I wouldn't have asked the question anyway.
MR. HU:--Mr. Chairman, may I ask Mr. BERNACCHI, Would that point be particularly considered jointly with other points so that the By-laws will be decided as a whole?
MR. BERNACCHI : This particular By-law amongst other By-laws has already been agreed on by the Policy Select Committee. It is now over to the Legal Draughtsman to draft the phraseology and pass it into Law by the Legislative Council. No, I am sorry, it is passed into law by this Council and confirmed by Legislative Council.
(8) MR. KENNETH T. C. Lo asked the following question:--
Apart from Hing Wah Estate, in what Estates (if any) does the Resettlement Department provide door to door collection of refuse for tenants? In those Estates where such a service is not provided, how do tenants commonly dispose of their refuse? Will the Commissioner for Resettlement consider providing such a service for all Resettlement Estates?
THE COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT replied as follows:--
In those estates where cleansing is done by contract, which is nine out of twenty urban estates, the contractor is required to collect refuse from the flats at least once a day.
In the remaining eleven estates, mainly of Mark I and II design in which cleansing is done by departmental labourers, there is no official door-to-door collection of refuse except at Tai Hang Tung, Jordan Valley and
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