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I202
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
CHAIRMAN (in Cantonese): Ladies and Gentlemen. The meeting is called to order.
MINUTES
The minutes of the meetings held on 11 and 13 January 1983 were confirmed.
PAPER
The following paper was laid on the table:
(1) Report to the Urban Council by the Director of Urban Services and Secretary, Urban Council, for the month of January 1983.
QUESTIONS
1. MR. WALTER M. SULKE asked the following question (in English): In view of the considerable media criticism of Council and U.S.D. actions concerning legal and illegal hawkers, could I please be informed what steps the Council is going to take this year in order to tackle the problem of illegal hawking in the urban areas?
MR. SHUM CHOI-SANG, CHAIRMAN OF THE MARKETS AND STREET TRADERS SELECT COMMITTEE, replied as follows (in Cantonese): This question concerns the steps to be taken by the Urban Council to tackle the problems of illegal hawking in the urban areas.
As Members are aware, the long-term objective of the Council is to move as many on-street hawkers as possible into off-street public markets or hawker bazaars. However, this will take time and, before the hawkers can be cleared from the streets, it is the Council's aim to re-order established operators in those areas where they are already concentrated by offering them fixed pitches and licensing them accordingly. This ensures that they are accommodated in areas where they will not cause too much health hazards or block pedestrian or vehicular traffic.
In 1983 the Council hopes to complete seven new market projects. These are the Aberdeen Urban Council Complex, To Kwa Wan Market, Tsun Yip Street Cooked Food Bazaar, Kwun Tong Ferry Concourse Cooked Food Centre, Kowloon City Temporary Market, Sai Wan Ho Urban Council Complex (Stage 1) and Shui Wo Street Market Complex. Apart from the reprovisioning of existing market stalls in old markets due to be demolished, there will be approximately 1,588 stalls for allocation to eligible on-street hawkers.
During the year, the Council will also continue to pursue its aim of re-ordering licensed itinerant and established hawkers into on-street fixed pitches.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
A number of surveys have already been completed and it is envisaged that some 1,200 hawkers will be re-ordered in this way.
At the same time, the Council will continue to take enforcement action against unlicensed operators in order to minimize the nuisance which they cause. The control commitment is shared between the General Duties Teams of the U.S.D. and the Police, with the Council controlling concentrations of street traders and the Police helping to keep major thoroughfares clear of obstruction. Members may recall that the Council has recently agreed to the creation of 298 additional posts in various ranks in order to augment the establishment of the General Duties Teams. It is hoped that when all these posts are filled and have become functional by the middle of the year, Council will be able to strengthen further its enforcement capability. Much of the criticism to which Mr. SULKE refers relates not so much to hawker control itself as to the Urban Council's apparent slowness in extending its hawker control. But the pace at which the Council can move here depends partly on the speed of the markets reconstruction programme and partly on the amount of money that the Council can afford to spend on General Duties Teams and hawker control, and whether sites are available for more on-street fixed pitches.
2. MR. WALTER M. SULKE asked the following question (in English): Central Government policy stipulates that licence fees must be fixed at a level to cover administrative costs but that they must not raise revenues for other purposes which would constitute a form of taxation. Although the Council has no alternative but to accept this policy, why should it not be possible to add all administrative costs for all licences under the Council's control and then share these out in a more equitable manner so that those like large restaurants, hotels and bars, who can afford it, pay higher fees than those like for instance hawkers who cannot afford constant fee increases, who would then pay lower fees?
MR. PETER P. F. CHAN, VICE-CHAIRMAN OF THE FINANCE SELECT COMMITTEE, replied as follows (in English): This question concerns the setting of Urban Council licence fees and whether it would be possible to add together the total administrative costs of all licensing procedures and to load a higher proportion of these costs on to some categories of licence than on to others.
Over the years, the consistent legal advice given to this Council has been that, in exercising the power to prescribe or specify licence fees delegated to it by legislation, the Council may seek to recover an amount no more than meets the cost of administering that category of licence.
In this way, fees for liquor licences should be related to the costs to the Council of the necessary paperwork, inspections and cross-checking for such licences and such licences only, and so on with other licences.
The cost of administration, therefore, must be related to the category of licence rather than put into a general pool for central allocation by the Council to areas at its discretion.
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