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over 15 years, I have been very concerned with the deterioration in Hong Kong's environment and especially with the increasing air pollution here, a concern which has probably made me somewhat too outspoken for the delicate ears of the Civil Servants who have to deal with this matter. But I do feel strongly on the subject and so I am tabling here today the contents of the speech I made last year on this subject. The South China Morning Post kindly published an edited version of this speech and the Commissioner for Environmental Protection replied to it at length, to which in turn I replied in a letter to the South China Morning Post. So in addition to tabulating the speech, I am also tabling Dr. REED's comments and my reply and would ask you to read all this carefully. And if you agree with what I have to say, and I hope you will agree, please do help me in saving our environment from Government's inertia, the latest example of which is the fact that still no action has been taken on asbestos other than that a Code of Practice has been drafted which will not be enforceable. When what should be done is to ban the import and use of, at least, blue asbestos, but better, of all asbestos.
Our work in dealing with Environmental Pollution is often underestimated by members and the public. It is apparently not well known that the biggest part of this Council's annual budget is spent on cleaning up some of the environmental pollution left by our citizens, and although the U.S.D. does a sterling job they know and we know that we must do better. This needs money and I will refer to this point again later in my speech. Here I just want to plead for a greater effort from us, from our Department and from Government as a whole.
The second problem I want to mention today is our perennial Hawker Problem.
Last year in this Chamber I asked for an independent enquiry into the hawker situation and our present hawker policies, and although I lost the motion I was glad to note that my fellow members were sufficiently impressed with what I had to say about the hawker problem to institute a Working Party to reconsider our present hawker policies. I am a member of that Working Party and I do not want to pre-empt the report of this Working Party which we hope to have finished by the end of June. But I do want to take this opportunity to state my own view, which is that we are NOT dealing with a social problem but an economic one. All sorts of interesting information which has been gathered by the Working Party has, just as I expected, shot down some of the myths which have gathered around this problem. One of these myths is that hawkers are a safety valve for industrial unemployment and provide a cheap form of Social Security. Quite apart from the fact that spending HK$70 million per annum on subsidising hawkers is not cheap, it turns out that when comparing a graph of the hawker population with a graph of unemployment, there is no correlation whatsoever. The hawker population does not increase with increasing unemployment, and conversely does not decrease with decreasing unemployment but, in fact, holds remarkably steady. And what is even more interesting: When one compares the total Urban population growth with the hawker population there again is no correlation. This is what leads me to surmise that we are dealing with an economic problem i.e. the supply and demand of the market and that accordingly we should deal with the hawker problem only on an economic basis.
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My own personal view, and I do emphasize that this is entirely my personal view, is that we should now licence all hawkers, including the illegal ones, at commercial rates, which would be somewhat higher than the present licence fees; that we should declare certain main thoroughfares as off-limits to all hawkers and open all other streets to hawkers but only between the hours of 10.00 a.m. and 3.00 p.m. during the day and between 6.30 p.m. and 10.00 p.m. at night.
This, I think would very quickly bring a market equilibrium and in a couple of years hawkers would only be found in those areas where there was real demand for their services, G.D.T. teams would have a much easier life and the police could enforce the law very much more easily as well, especially in keeping main thoroughfares clear at all times.
I am sure that my plan would benefit the hawkers, would benefit the citizens who need to buy goods from the hawkers, and not least, would benefit the Council because licence fees would incorporate an element of tax. We could also be much more sensible about how many markets we build and where we put them, and I therefore estimate that we could cut our present hawker subsidy in half. But this is really a secondary consideration. The primary consideration must be to safeguard the livelihood of 50,000 of our hawker citizens and at the same time make life easier for those of our fellow citizens who either must or prefer to buy their daily necessities from the hawkers, without these activities interfering with the rest of us.
The third problem facing the Council I want to talk about today is the Problem of the URBAN COUNCIL Leadership.
I mentioned last year that we are suffering from a lack of leadership in this Council and I am afraid, regardless of the Chairman's reply to my remarks at last year's Annual Debate, nothing has changed. Government and the Department are still walking all over us. In the White Paper we only get one seat in LEGCO when at the very least we should have had two. In the reorganization attendant on the founding of the New Territories Council and the new Secretary of Municipal Council, we get short shrift and are losing our powers. So much so that newspapers are beginning to say that the Urban Council is a monster, a remnant of Colonialism, and should be abolished. And then as an after-thought they ask what we do. Now I ask you, if we had leadership would anyone dare to ask what we do? Could our leader not have stumped the City to point out that without us there wouldn't be any Museums, there would be only half the cultural activities, a lot of sports could not take place and the City would be dirty the way it was before 1973. As yet I have seen no answers anywhere to the media attacks made on us.
Typical, also, of this lack of leadership is the hiding away of our financial problem. In a recent speech our Chairman promised in public that this Council
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