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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
MR. SHUM (in Cantonese):---Mr. Chairman, the Council always pay attention to the control of hawkers in different districts and the General Duties Teams have made improvements in hawker management. These may help to improve the situation.
MISS YEUNG (in Cantonese): Mr. Chairman, Mr. SHUM mentioned earlier that there was scarcity of sites for temporary bazaars. Has the Council considered developing areas closer to the hills to develop them into viable areas or make use of land reclaimed from the sea?
MR. SHUM (in Cantonese): Mr. Chairman, the U.S.D. is working very hard on looking for viable sites for temporary bazaars, but the allocation of sites is not totally under our control and we need Government's approval in order to make use of certain sites. I know that the U.S.D. has asked the Government for as many sites as possible for this purpose. If members have any specific suggestions, we will forward them to the U.S.D. for further discussion with the Government.
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Council for refuse collection points. In the interim, we are forced to still maintain many unsightly and often unsatisfactory on-street refuse collection points. We have been pressing the Government to change the law in this respect for many years and whilst so far we have obtained no legislation enabling us to require developers to provide refuse collection chambers there is some light at the end of the tunnel and legislation will hopefully be enacted before too long. We have also managed to build 48 off-street refuse collection points, which with modern carbon filters in the newer ones, make them much more acceptable than the temporary ones we have had in the past.
Mr. Chairman, I do not wish to bore you and Members with long statistical tables or to labour the point on our environmental health work but I think that I must today make this statement as without the work which the Environmental Hygiene Select Committee and thousands of staff who support its work in the field, Hong Kong would indeed be a city in which it would be impossible to live in comfort never mind enjoy the cultural and recreational activities which my colleagues have mentioned in the past few months. So here, I would like to put down in record a vote of thanks for all staff who are involved in environmental work.
STATEMENT BY CHAIRMAN OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL HYGIENE SELECT COMMITTEE
DR. DENNY M. H. HUANG (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, at recent meetings of the Council Members have addressed you on various aspects of cultural and recreational activities undertaken by the Council. However, as desirable as these are the health of the population is our primary concern and indeed it was for this reason that the Sanitary Board was set up many years ago which led to the formation of the present Urban Council.
The collection of refuse, the maintenance of cemeteries and crematoria, management of public latrines, and bathhouses and the collection of night soil from those premises still not possessing flush latrines, are not in any way glamorous jobs but it will not be amiss for me to remind you, Mr. Chairman, and other Members of the Council of our responsibilities in these matters.
Staff in excess of 3,500 work in the environmental health field for the Council and they, for instance, collect some 2,800 tonnes of domestic and street refuse everyday, operate one of the largest fleets of municipal vehicles and deal with a growing problem resulting from an increasingly affluent and therefore modern throw-away society. Despite most places having modern sanitary fixtures, last year we still collected in excess of 6,500,000 litres of night soil and indeed although most people have access to their own bathing facilities, more than 1 million people per annum still use our public bathhouses.
We, of course, have our problems with lack of Government action on mandatory refuse collection chambers and a reluctance to grant land to the Council...
STATEMENT BY CHAIRMAN OF THE CLEAN HONG KONG COMMITTEE
MR. HOWARD H. W. YOUNG (in Cantonese): Mr. Chairman and Members, members will have already received the comprehensive report on the 14-month Clean Hong Kong Campaign, and will recall that with the Council's full support, the former Governor launched the Campaign in October 1981, having first stated that the standard of cleanliness was deteriorating in the Urban areas, and was unsatisfactory in the New Territories.
The report lists the activities of all six phases of the campaign, and the planning procedures involved. Its assessment on page 28 points out the successes and failures.
Members can take heart that in a recent opinion survey, hardly anyone was unaware of the campaign and the ‘eyes' symbol, and that the public's answer to the question 'is Hong Kong cleaner than a year ago' was ‘yes' (59%), 'the same' (32%), and ‘dirtier' (5%). From personal observation, and from other feedback in the report I must say I concur with these findings. This reflects well on the U.S.D. cleansing force, and I congratulate them.
I am also glad that 77% thought the campaign 'effective', as opposed to 14% ineffective. It does appear that the campaign was most successful in the streets, estates and the squatter areas, where the Council took new initiative and spent four months cleaning them; and in prosecutions, where many Government...
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