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no query on the proper lease basis, it is merely a query on the persons eligible for taking part in the tender. Then he says "but we have to consider carefully whether we should treat the people who happen to trade in their huts as a privileged class". Well, that is the whole idea of resettlement, that resettlement means clearing away the squatter structures, whether it be domestic or business and resettle them, not resettling them domestically but resettling them as a whole, their business, their family as a whole, and that is why I say that if this policy is altered in respect to shops, then the whole of resettlement will have to be abandoned. Then he says that "they will have an opportunity with the rest of the shopkeepers of tendering". Well, he has just said before that they are bad tenants. If they are bad tenants, then why give them an opportunity of competing in the open tender? The whole of his speech when carefully examined is one contradiction after another; he indulges in mere hopes. At the end of his speech he says "the Government should use the premium money obtained from tender for improving the recreation and other facilities in the estates concerned". Does Mr. CHAN think that by saying that the Government will act upon it? It is a mere fruitless hope, because the money will, under the Government system, go into general revenue and whether or not money is used to improve the recreation or other facilities is another consideration entirely. Mr. Henry Hu in supporting the motion says that the motion is for the common interest. I say, yes, I agree with him, for the common interest insofar as the whole of resettlement from the time that it was first organized and it was organized by this Council, is for clearance of people, their trades, everything, into Resettlement Estates, and if we do not adopt the motion, if we adopt the idea of giving public tender to shopkeepers so as to let in the wealthier class who have no right or any connection with resettlement, then it will destroy the whole idea of resettlement. I urge Members therefore to support this motion.
The question was put.
The motion was lost with 16 votes against and 5 for.
(2) MR. B. A. BERNACCHI moved the following motion:-
"That compulsory resite cooked food stall licensees should be offered accommodation in stall sites recovered by the Council, on the temporary basis, until the whole line of stalls are cleared to an off-street bazaar."
He said: I do hope in this case that more of the Members who are not in favour of the motion would give their reasons instead of voting almost, Civic Association, Officials, Unofficials, in opposition.
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MR. LO TAK-SHING:--I think, Mr. Chairman, the comment that anyone is blind is personal and should be disallowed.
MR. BERNACCHI:--I withdraw the word "blindly".
This is a very specialized subject involving very special hardship on very few deserving hawkers. For the ordinary fixed pitch hawker, when for some reason, he is compulsory resited, the U.S.D., on behalf of the Urban Council, has only to find a suitable 3' x 4' site, but in the case of cooked food stalls, there has to be found a 6' x 3' site, plus an area for a bench around the stalls, plus room for the inevitable, at least, two tables and eight chairs which the Urban Council has come to realize all cooked food stall hawkers require. Now the present policy is eventually to find enough off-street cooked food bazaars, throughout the Urban area, to site these cooked food stall holders, so that they give service to the public, but not to cause obstruction to through roads. Unfortunately, as in very great number of other projects, lack of space and lack of manpower, are delaying the real implementation of this programme. So it has been decided by the Urban Council to work on the principle that, if a licensee dies, and there is a successful applicant for succession, the successor must, if required, move into an off-street cooked food bazaar. This is very convenient in theory, but in practice, you have a line of cooked food stalls, with one gap, where an unlicensed hawker swoops, even erects an unlicensed stall and there is literally, not enough men on the ground either hawker control force, hawker liaison officers or police, to keep this vacant site clear of unlicensed hawkers. In fact, this has already happened so much, that the Hawkers Select Committee, has just recently, given a large discretion to the U.S.D. not to move a successor, if in the opinion of the Department, to do so would only give rise to unlicensed hawking. But, apart from this, there are already a good few sites that appear as gaps in a line of stalls, and therefore are occupied by unlicensed hawkers.
Now we come to the hardship cases, a man perhaps with a large family dependent on the cooked food stall, or even a widow with a large family, is compulsorily resited because of building works or other conditions that make his/her existing stall site no longer available. Now I say, a compulsory resite but in fact, there are no, or very few, sites to go to because the Government as a whole is usually not prepared to agree to the creation of new on-street sites and there is neither the off-street sites at present available, nor if there are, it is usually in a district far from the man's original site, far from a widow's home where her children live, and in any case, not a very good site for prospect of business. Now, this motion is very simple. We have gaps in a line of cooked food stalls. We have compulsory resite licensees waiting for a
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