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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
69
Finally, I have a piece of advice for unlicensed hawkers. If they want to make a living by hawking, I hope they will bid for the pitch sites of our Lunar New Year Fair. If they have no other alternatives but to hawk in order to make a living, I hope they will not sell cooked food. If they must sell cooked food, I hope they will take care not to cause injuries to passers-by when they run away from hawker control staff. Thank you.
MR. TAM KWOK-KIU (in Cantonese):–
Jurisdictions of the Urban Services Department and Housing Department Must Be Clearly Defined
Mr. Chairman, my electoral constituencies, be it the District Board Constituency or Urban Council Constituency, are comprised largely of public housing estates. Therefore, what I am most concerned about is how the Urban Council or the Urban Services Department exercises its functions and authority in areas that are under the management of the Housing Department. Theoretically, the most ideal mode of management is for every department to perform its own functions, instead of having one department perform the functions of another in a certain area simply because that area is under its management. However, in practice, this is not the case. The duties of the Urban Services Department and the Housing Department overlap in certain areas. A very good example is operations against hawkers in public housing estates. In March last year, the Urban Council officially delegated to the Housing Department the power to arrest hawkers, and to seize and dispose of their trading paraphernalia under the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance. The delegation is valid for 1 year. In other words, the validity of such delegation of power will soon expire and I think it is time to discuss whether it is appropriate for this delegation of power to continue.
As indicated by its name, the Housing Department is responsible for matters concerning housing. Therefore it should devote all its resources to housing management. However, there is the tendency for the Housing Department to deal with all matters that occur within housing estates, from impounding cars and issuing parking tickets to hawker control. No wonder the establishment of the Housing Department is becoming larger and larger. Taking everything into its purview will lead to problems of over-expansion of power as well as overlapping of authority. Take hawker control operations for instance. They used to be the duties of USD originally, but when they were passed to Housing Department, the problem that immediately arose was, of course, a waste of resources. When hawker clearance operations are carried out on the periphery and in surrounding areas of public housing estates, Housing Department staff will be responsible for intercepting the hawkers inside the housing estates, whereas USD staff will surround the hawkers from the outside. A job which can be done by one team now requires two departments to handle. As coordination between the 2 departments alone already takes up considerable time, the effectiveness of such operations will of course be affected. From June to October 1995, only 18 such joint operations
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