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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
While expanding our library services into all districts, we are also planning to improve the services by increasing the bookstock, which at present stands at well over half a million volumes. 1975 should also see the opening of our Record Listening Library, a project that has been temporarily held up pending alterations to the City Hall premises.
Our libraries already have about half a million registered borrowers, and the number of books issued for home reading this year increased by 16%. Additional libraries should speed up the increase in library use. However, we are not yet satisfied with our services, and are continually seeking ways to improve them.
(a) So far I have concentrated on Urban Council work, but this past year has shown just how inadequate our Urban Council jurisdiction is. The problems that plague the people of Hong Kong and which are dealt with in our ward offices, are almost entirely outside our council work, and like my colleague, Mr. BERNACCHI, I already realize that it was a mistake to remove housing from our jurisdiction, as we are no longer able to ask public questions on this very critical problem facing the Hong Kong people.
Most of our present problems in Hong Kong have been wrongly blamed on the so-called "oil crisis" and world economic problems. But I challenge the Government to prove that the blame for the housing shortage can be placed anywhere except on the Hong Kong Government, for neglecting its housing programme in the late 1960s, and especially for allowing big building contractors to get away with broken contracts. This same laissez-faire attitude towards powerful contractors is now obvious in delays in roadworks because money disappeared from big business accounts. I just wonder how many of us ordinary citizens could get away with the lawlessness that the Government tolerates among its big business friends, who seem to be able to break contracts at will and with impunity. Moreover, if the money that now lies depreciating by the million every day in London had been used to build more housing, we could have been reaping a profit in rents instead of losing fortunes from our reserves.
The Government seems to be totally without concern that most tenants in Group B public housing estates are living at densities of 10 to 15 square feet per person and the only solution the Housing Department has to offer is to delete as many tenants as possible from tenancy cards, to reduce overcrowding on the records: it leaves the deleted persons in a state of insecurity and without an alternative place to live.
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Ten years ago, the Government yielded to public pressure and allowed homeless people to build huts in licensed areas. Today this policy exists only on paper, and no one can get an immediate site for a hut on becoming homeless. Even transit centres, intended as temporary accommodation during fires, storms and floods, are full and have become permanent residences. Homeless people are being turned away even from these holes, and left to sleep on the streets or split up among friends and relatives. The pressures on homeless people are incredible, and will no doubt show up in mental institutions, or perhaps even in prisons.
As to Group A estates, many of us were glad to hear that they would eventually replace Group B Estates for living standards. What we were not told was that the Government saw this as a way of making more money. These public flats are no longer being built for low-income families. Families are being asked to pay rents ranging from $340 to $550 from incomes set at a maximum of $1,400 to $2,000. What is left for food, clothing, education, medical expenses, travelling and other necessities, after paying out these high rents? Moreover, the Government seems to be utterly ignorant of the fact that many families earn a great deal less than the maximum. It is easy for fat-salaries officials paying a pittance in rent for subsidized luxury flats to demand that workers should pay one quarter to one half of their meagre salaries on rent. This is supposed to be "low-cost" housing. I humbly suggest that the Government bureaucracy and some of the members of this Council on the Housing Authority know nothing whatever about the present living standards of the workers. The large number of refusals to accept flats at Oi Man Estate should be an indicator, but obviously no one is looking for public reaction: the aim is to squeeze money from the poorest people, and that at a time of economic depression.
(b) We often look with admiration on the workers of Hong Kong who laboured hard in the 1950s to make Hong Kong a thriving industrial port. In those years we succeeded only because small and big business were encouraged: everyone pitched in and worked. I believe that the people of Hong Kong still have the resilience to rise up from this mess, which is not of their making, but they are being hindered in their efforts. Small business is the forte of the local people, but in the name of development, the Government has systematically demolished small business and encouraged big capital to eat up small capital. The Government has kept land prices beyond the capacity of small business, and allowed
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