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MR. BERNACCHI:-Mr. Chairman, I will try and frame my question as a supplementary, but this is a very important matter, and could the matter of deciding, in the first instance, whether we are or are not the competent authority to decide who is qualified for domestic resettlement be referred to the appropriate Select Committee and, indeed, they may themselves want to take legal opinion. But could the matter be referred and be cleared up once and for all?
COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT:-Mr. Chairman, I would be glad to discuss that with the chairman of the appropriate committee.
(2) MRS. E. ELLIOTT asked the following question:-
(a) What can pedlar hawkers do in areas where fixed pitches have been allocated to illegally static hawkers?
(b) Is it true that the Council intended to give all pedlar hawkers the opportunity to take static pitches, before prohibiting them from operating in the vicinity of new bazaars?
(c) Is it true, as stated in letters from the Hawker Licensing Office, Kowloon, that pedlar hawkers who do not get a static pitch may operate "anywhere else"? If not, why are such notifications being sent to unsuccessful claimants for pitches? What provision is being made for long-term pedlar hawkers in urban areas and in resettlement estates, who have always kept the law by operating according to the terms of their licences, that is, from baskets carried on poles?
MR. HILTON CHEONG-LEEN, CHAIRMAN OF THE HAWKERS SELECT COMMITTEE, replied as follows:
In 1970, a survey was carried out of all stall hawkers including licensed Pedlars operating from stalls. The policy is to convert all of these to Fixed Pitch hawkers whenever tidy-up operations are carried out or whenever they can be sited off-street into bazaars. In addition, long-established hawkers without stalls trading in line with and in between such stalls will at the same time also be upgraded to Fixed Pitch status and given sites.
However, whenever hawkers in a street have been so licensed as Fixed Pitch hawkers, and the street has been re-demarcated for Fixed Pitch sites and occupied by the licensees, all pedlar hawkers, whether licensed or unlicensed have to be kept out. This follows the decision taken some years ago that pedlar hawkers must not be permitted to trade in streets in which Fixed Pitch stalls are sited. It is well-known that the incursion of pedlar hawkers into these streets forces the stall hawkers to place their goods outside the boundaries of their pitches or even to abandon their sites so that they can compete with the pedlars—resulting in whole streets being blocked.
In converting illegal static hawkers to Fixed Pitch status in a street where both kerbs have already been entirely occupied, it is inevitable that those pedlar hawkers on the carriageway in the centre of the street will have to be made to move away.
It is impossible therefore to give all pedlar hawkers the opportunity to take static pitches because of the shortage of off-street bazaar sites and also because some will no doubt be genuine pedlars. Those pedlar hawkers who cannot be converted to Fixed Pitch hawkers must therefore trade elsewhere, within the terms of their licences, in streets which are not prohibited to hawkers and, as Members are aware, such streets are gradually decreasing in number.
MRS. ELLIOTT:-Mr. Chairman, the answer skirts very carefully round the question and misses it. Would the Chairman of this committee please notice that I was not asking about fixed pitches with licences. I was talking about illegal static hawkers and pedlars. May I ask a supplementary? Which were operating according to their licence conditions, the pedlars or the illegal static pitches?
MR. CHEONG-LEEN:-Mr. Chairman, I think the situation varies on the ground from street to street and I think it is impossible for me at a Council meeting like this to answer that question.
MRS. ELLIOTT:-Mr. Chairman, I was asking which ones were operating according to the terms of their licence. Pedlar hawker licence means pedlar hawker. I am referring to a street where there are illegal fixed pitches and pedlars. Which ones are operating according to their licence conditions?
MR. CHEONG-LEEN:-Mr. Chairman, as I said, the situation would vary on the ground from street to street.
MRS. ELLIOTT:-Mr. Chairman, he is avoiding the question, I am afraid. I wanted to know which were legal. The pedlar licence makes a pedlar mobile. I want to know why some pedlars are being thrust out and static hawkers are being given priority, although they were the ones breaking the law?
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