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fixed pitch hawkers who have been displaced, permanently or temporarily, by public or private development projects. The Police and the Public Works Department are normally consulted on the suitability of the sites before they were declared as HPA's.
(c) Rigid enforcement, by means of joint Police and USD raids, has been made to re-establish control in Hawker Permitted Areas, in order to permit:
(i) a clear 15' carriageway in these areas for commercial and emergency vehicles;
(ii) to ensure that the areas are clear of mobile hawkers outside the prescribed trading hours in order to prevent them from taking root; and
(iii) to allow cleansing to be done in the interests of public health and environmental hygiene.
(4) To put hawking under proper control, reduce to a minimum the nuisances created by hawking, and to limit hawking to small-scale business.
(a) Illegal expansions and extensions are checked when these come to the attention of USD staff.
(b) Hawkers causing obstruction and other nuisances are summonsed from time to time.
(c) The dimensions of licensed news stands have been enlarged from 4' x 1' to 6' x 18" recently, but the Council has decided not to give in to any demands for further enlargement, having regard to its responsibility towards safeguarding the interests of pedestrians in location where these stands are normally found.
(d) The Council is currently proceeding with the licensing of wall stalls on Crown land, in order to effect a better control over this type of hawkers. Only those stalls which have been included in the departmental survey and comply with the licensing conditions would be licensed.
(5) To give established hawkers a legitimate status.
(a) Licensed itinerant hawkers who have nevertheless erected their own stalls or been trading on a static rather than mobile basis, will have their status upgraded to that of fixed pitch, whenever they are removed to an off-street site or a reordering exercise is undertaken. Such upgrading applies to those hawkers included in 1970 hawker survey.
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grading applies to those hawkers included in 1970 hawker survey.
(6) To regard hawking as a business but not entirely disassociating it from social welfare.
(a) The Council will continue to consider the issue of new hawkers licences to those persons on the recommendation of the Social Welfare Department. Since the inception of the public assistance scheme, however, the number of cases referred from the S.W.D. has gradually diminished.
(b) Widows and widowers of deceased operating licensees may now succeed to licences provided they are capable of operating the business personally after succession.
(7) To recognize that, in times of adverse economic circumstances, hawking is capable of acting as a buffer against unemployment and that, when favourable economic conditions prevail, the Select Committee will take such steps as may be deemed advisable to reduce street trading; in this light, implementation of the policies set out above can be modified by the Select Committee.
With these remarks, Mr. Chairman, I second the Motion before the Council.
(Dr. P. C. WONG arrived at this point.)
MR. B. A. BERNACCHI (in English): Mr. Chairman, In rising to support the motion, I want to concentrate on three matters: 1. The anticipated rise in income by virtue of rates;
2.
3.
Rates
The role that the Urban Council should play in Public Housing;
Reasonable expansion of the jurisdiction, composition and franchise in respect to the Urban Council.
Section 7 of the Rating Ordinance defines the rateable value as an amount equal to the rent which the property might reasonably be expected to be rented for from year to year. The Ordinance originally put on the Commissioner of Rating to make an appropriate valuation yearly so that in the past, and with the fairly stable financial conditions of the past, the small increase each year in rateable value was no hardship to anyone. However, by Section 11 the Governor now directs the Commissioner when to prepare new valuation lists. For the last 4 years he has not done so except for a few special areas.
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