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Tuesday, August 15, 1972
Mr
Chui said that uncontrolled hawking with the resultant traffic
obstruction, health hazards, fire risks and environmental pollution was already
an unacceptable nuisance to countless residents and street users.
However, government policy has to accept the fact that hawking must
be allowed to continue to provide a needed service to the public and to protect
the livelihood of the 45,000 licensed hawkers.
Ideally they should be sited in proper bazaars, but because of the
shortage of suitable sites and the many highly competitive uses to which the
land could be put, on-street hawking will have to be tolerated for many more
years. But, he said, it is only fair that the government should ensure that
the public nuisance is reduced to an absolute minimum,
"There will be no hope of making licensed hawkers toe the line unless,
and until, unlicensed hawking can be stamped out. Experience has convinced us
that summonsing and arresting hawkers is not effective as a deterrent.
"Unlicensed hawkers simply return, within a matter of hours, to the
same spot, and the fines are regarded by them as merely a daily licence fee."
Mr. Chui stressed that this was "undermining the dignity of the law"
and making hawker control a "heart breaking job". At the same time, licensed
hawkers were aggrieved because they paid a licence fee and had to abide by
stringent rules on pain of various penalties, but illegal hawkers seemed to be
getting away with it all the time,
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