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hawker control in the evening after the GDTs have finished their duty. The Department, however, welcomes any increased assistance and support given by the Police, and would continue to liaise with the latter to organize as many joint operations as the available resources on both sides permitted.

MR. B. A. BERNACCHI (in English):--Mr. Chairman, I have five short supplementaries. First of all, what happened to the man who was arrested after this incident.

MR. STEPHEN LAU MAN-LUNG (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, I answered that on that day one Chinese male and one female were arrested. Now the Police have released them on bail and they are still investigating on these two persons. According to our understanding, we still do not have any outcome indicating whether these people would be prosecuted. If Mr. BERNACCHI is interested, I will find out more and let him know after this meeting. Perhaps I will provide a written answer later.

MR. B. A. BERNACCHI (in English):-Yes, I would like that. The second question is, do the Police in general, (a) make speedy response when requested and (b) take action to remove persons who are threatening the GDT?

MR. STEPHEN LAU MAN-LUNG (in Cantonese): On that particular day the GDT did what they used to do. They used a portable radio to inform the Police and the police station sent their staff to reach them very shortly; but under such circumstances, it is very easy for these 20 people who threatened the GDT members to disperse. So when the Police arrived, they were only able to arrest two, the other just went away.

MR. B. A. BERNACCHI (in English):—The third one is that, in the answer, it was mentioned that the Police would liaise with Urban Services' staff. Do these meetings with the Police get any where?

MR. STEPHEN LAU MAN-LUNG (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, as my reply indicated, the USD is acting closely with the Police at different levels. In the lower level, of course, there are operational liaison, but even in the directorate level, they also have liaison. As for the outcome, whether we can have the desirable result, as I said, both parties faced resources constraints. So even if they understand each other's problems very well, sometimes it is very difficult to have the desirable result because as I said, the Police has a higher priority in keeping law and order in Hong Kong. And so I am afraid they may not be able to allot top priority to keeping the hawkers in order. They may not have the manpower to do so. I am afraid this is the situation, but I am sure they have close liaison.

MR. B. A. BERNACCHI (in English):-The fourth supplementary is to do these joint operations on an average of once a week now or are they just once a week? There is a difference.

MR. STEPHEN LAU MAN-LUNG (in Cantonese):--Mr. Chairman, according to my understanding, now the frequency was improved from once every month to once every week. I am sure that this improvement is very significant. I would also like to supply more information here. In Chai Wan close to the Walton Estate, two small teams were already sent there to step up patrolling hoping that this will keep the illegal hawkers away, and recently there is a restructuring exercise for the GDT members and the foremen's responsibility has been upgraded. We hope that this restructuring will also help the GDT staff to arrest more illegal hawkers. If we want improvement to all eleven teams, we will have to wait until September because the increase of such posts not only involves increasing the manpower, but also means more training; it will take some time to have these people trained. So I hope that after September we will see a remarkable improvement in hawker management in the Eastern District.

MR. B. A. BERNACCHI (in English):--The last question is in paragraph 5 of the English version which starts at 'The location in question is one of the notorious hawkers blackspots in the Eastern District.' and finishes 'Generally speaking, illegal hawking activities on this footbridge are under control.'. How does the Chairman make these remarks, it is vice versa, in the same paragraph. ‘One of the notorious hawking blackspots,' and yet he says 'illegal hawking are under control.' It seems to me that these are quite incompatible with each other.

MR. STEPHEN M. L. LAU (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, in view of the situation in the past few months, we have already sent two special squads to monitor the situation around the blackspots and they did not discover too many illegal hawking around. So, yes, it is a blackspot but under the situation we can still say the illegal hawking activities are under control because we are not seeing anything worsening but please do not forget one point, in the urban area, we have many such blackspots not only in Chai Wan. We can see such blackspots in many districts. So it is very difficult sometimes for us to deploy enough staff to each and every of these blackspots. I hope that Mr. BERNACCHI will sympathize with the constraints faced by the GDT members and the difficulties they have in their operations. Of course, ideally speaking, we should have a bigger team in every district to persuade people not to patronize these illegal hawkers. Because more customers will mean more illegal hawkers. I think education is very important and constructive.

MISS CHRISTINA TING YUK-CHEE (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, thank you. This is a supplementary question concerning the Eastern District. Mr. LAU told us that the Eastern District is a very densely populated district, that is why we have many illegal hawkers. The Eastern District Board members have already said that 11 teams are simply not enough. On Sundays, several teams will be deployed to Central, so we do not have 11 teams working on Sundays. That is why illegal hawking is particularly rampant on Sundays. Mr. LAU said that after September more staff will be added, this is a piece of good news. I will bring this back to the Eastern District Board. Is this confirmed? I am asking

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