HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
(4) If a more exact number of hawkers is available, it is easy for the Authority to deploy an adequate number of staff to look after the area.
(5) The revenue generated from issuing of provisional licences will help to off-set a portion of the expenditure in controlling hawkers.
(6) The aim of the provisional licences is to contain the situation and prevent further growth in the number of unlicensed hawkers, therefore new unlicensed hawkers should be discouraged and registered by the Labour Department immediately once they appear in the Hawkers Permitted Areas.
From the above-mentioned pros and cons, it seems issuing of provisional licences to unlicensed hawkers with long experience should be seriously considered.
Under our present policy, in principle, almost no new hawker licences will be issued. But in some cases, applications for hawker licences under special circumstances will not discontinue to be considered.
For instance, applications for succession of hawker licences by older widows and widowers will be sustained; and transfer of a licence to a genuine operator over 40 years old will also be tolerated by the Council for the time being.
Recently, there are many established hawkers affected by the construction of the Mass Transit Railway system. They should be treated sympathetically. The existence of hawkers may be due to many reasons. But the main causes are: convenience to the residents, lack of proper bazaars and markets; an easy way to earn a living or the wider profit margin. And when economy is bad, unemployed people may take hawking as a temporary measure.
Convenience to the residents may mean that there are too few shops providing such kind of services in the neighbourhood, such as newspaper vendors in the new housing estates; or because hawkers provide a much better service in terms of money, i.e., much cheaper in price.
Most people believe that the daily earning by an average hawker is higher than a worker's daily pay in the factory.
In December, 1978, a voluntary body conducted a survey on legal eating places for workers in San Po Kong Area. The findings are not satisfactory. There are about 80,000 industrial workers in 4,200 factories. It shows that only 40,000 workers can have their lunch provided by legal eating places. The 40,000 figure includes 20% of workers' population to have self-prepared lunch and back home lunch. That means about 24,000 workers have their lunch in licensed restaurants, food shops, cooked food stalls, quick food shops and canteens in the factory premises. Another 40,000 workers most probably buy their lunch from illegal hawkers.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
If we think that this figure is, to some extent, not representing the true even we allow a 50% margin of miscalculation, the figure still comes to 20,000.
It shows clearly that there are insufficient legal eating places for the whole area. That is why there are so many illegal cooked-food hawkers or illegal fast-food hawkers in the district during lunch time. Lack of legal shopping facilities will lead to the creation of more illegal hawkers.
As the illegal hawkers do not have to pay any licence fee, rent and tax, their cost is therefore lower than that of the shopkeepers or the legal hawkers. That explains why they can ask for lower prices.
But it requires a lot of manpower to clean the street, to keep the road clear for traffic, to control the hawkers who may cause nuisance to the residents and shopkeepers in the neighbourhood.
Last year, the Urban Council agreed to increase the number of General Duties Teams to 12. The force may be ready by July this year. By that time, it is expected that, in each Urban Services district, there will be a GD Team. The Urban Services Department, the executive arm of the Urban Council, are confident that they would be able to have a better control over hawkers.
But the fundamental solution for the hawker problem depends on land available for bazaars and markets; adequate enforcement to keep hawkers under control; the law to deter people from hawking in busy roads or creating nuisance to the general public; and the Labour Department to provide information for job opportunities and training courses to those who may want to embark on hawking.
If we can stop people becoming new hawkers and if we can get all hawkers off the street and move them into bazaars and markets, the hawker problem will eventually be solved.
Before we can get sufficient land for bazaars and markets, we have to rely on sufficient enforcement manpower and adequate law to control the hawkers.
As the Government has adopted a free education system up to Form 3, we can expect more young people making use of all sorts of recreation facilities provided by the Urban Council. It is indeed a good policy to let these young people spend their leisure time in healthy sports activities which leads to promotion of sportsmanship.
A good programme for entertainment and recreation is also a good supplementary programme for anti-crime campaign. It is hoped that the Urban Council can provide more of such meaningful programmes for the youth of Hong Kong.
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