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planning and design stage and enters the production stage, it is necessary for the consultants management group of the Architectural Office to increase its support and guidance so that projects comply with Government regulations on stores, materials, finance, maintenance and contractual matters. This is a time-consuming process and involves a good deal of work for the Architectural Office.
The Council expects that more private architects will be employed in the future to cope with its capital works programme. I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to those architects who have already contributed to this programme and for the imaginative way in which they have developed and presented plans for new projects.
MR. LAU (in Cantonese):- Mr. Chairman, private architects are normally not very interested in our projects, I wonder whether Mr. FUNG has any ideas to improve the situation?
MR. FUNG (in English):- Mr. Chairman, that's why in each of the packages farmed out to private consultants, there are a number of projects, they usually involve a very large one and then some other smaller projects so as to make a particular package attractive to the architectural consultant.
MR. LAU (in Cantonese):- Mr. Chairman, our services to the public have increased recently, can I ask Mr. FUNG whether he has any methods to prevent delays on the part of the private architects?
MR. FUNG (in English):- Mr. Chairman, if I may answer on behalf of the Administration Select Committee, I think it is the policy of the Council not to rent premises wherever possible. But the normal process of construction supervision both by the Principal Government Architect and the Assistant Director (Planning) will assure that none of our projects will be delayed.
MR. LAU (in Cantonese):- Thank you.
6. DR. PHILIP C. K. KWOK asked the following question (in Cantonese):- With the opening of new Urban Council markets, are there any market-stall holders who find their stalls non-viable? If so, what plans are there to improve their business prospects?
MR. SHUM CHOI-SANG, CHAIRMAN OF THE MARKETS AND STREET TRADERS SELECT COMMITTEE, replied as follows (in Cantonese):- This question concerns the viability of stalls in new Urban Council markets and possible plans to improve business prospects in them.
The first part of this question is whether any stall holders in new Urban Council markets find their stalls to be non-viable. It is not easy to give any specific answer to this question but, in general, the Council and the Department go to great lengths to ensure that new public markets are located on the most suitable sites available and that their interior design is such that stalls will be able to do good business. By and large, new markets are built either on the site of old markets which have to be re-provisioned or in areas where markets have not previously been provided but where there are substantial concentrations of hawkers. In this respect, I think that there will always be a demand from residents in the area for the goods which are sold from market stalls.
As regards the question of interior design, the number of stalls currently vacant is very small and this would seem to be the best indication that the great majority of stalls in the Council's new markets are viable.
For the record, I should mention that a number of major markets have been opened in recent years. These are the Mong Kok Market with 148 stalls, the Yue Wan Market in Chai Wan with 434 stalls, and the Bowrington Road Market in Wan Chai with 311 stalls. Recently the Council has also opened the Hollywood Road Market in the Western District with 227 stalls and the Ngau Tau Kok Market in the Kwun Tong district with 372 stalls. The Council is also in the process of opening the Tin Wan Market in Aberdeen with 197 stalls and this will be followed shortly by the Yue Kwong Road Market, also in Aberdeen, with 220 stalls. In all these markets, there is one vacant stall in the Mong Kok Market, two in the Bowrington Road Market, and none in the Yue Wan Market. In the four more recent markets which I have just mentioned, the Council has so far let 937 stalls out of the 1016 available and I anticipate that most of the remainder will be occupied at an early date.
The conclusion from this appears to be that only a small minority of stall holders find that their stalls are not viable. This may be either because of the location of their stalls inside market buildings or, possibly, because they have been unable to compete successfully with other similar stalls whose operators may be more skillful.
As regards the second part of the question, namely whether there are any plans to improve the business prospects of non-viable stalls, the answer seems to be that no overall plan would be appropriate and, once markets are built, there is little that can be done to improve the prospects of individual stalls although in some cases where it is possible to make modifications, this is in fact being done. The Council is continually improving the layout of markets in the light of experience, and improved facilities are being introduced when new markets are built. For example, escalators are now provided in new permanent markets to improve access to upper floors. One of the major areas in which we can assist market stall holders is to keep hawkers away from the entrances to markets as this can affect business quite severely, and the Council is providing General Duties Teams to perform this work in addition to other hawker control duties. I should also mention that the market stall rentals set by the Council take into account the viability of markets in particular areas and I do not believe that the level of rent is rendering any stall non-viable.
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