10
Wednesday, August 16, 1972
HAWKER BILL TO BE APPLIED "HUMANELY AND IMPARTIALLY"
*
The Acting Director of Urban Services, the Hon. A.P. Richardson, today
reassured the general public that the Public Health and Urban Services (Amendment)
(No.4) Bill 1972, which deals with hawking, would be applied "both humanely
and impartially" when it was passed into law.
He described the amending Bill as "essential" if hawkers were to be
effectively controlled and if the "Keep Hong Kong Clean" Campaign was to succeed
in dirty hawker areas,
He was speaking in the Legislative Council while moving the second
reading of the Bill.
The Bill seeks to extend the powers of the authority to make new
regulations, to empower the Commissioner for Transport to declare any street to
be set aside for hawking purposes, and to provide in certain instances, for the
mandatory forfeiture of commodities and equipment belonging to hawkers.
Mr. Richardson said in some areas, hawking now made any form of
cleansing virtually impossible and as a result, rats and flies bred freely and
the nearby residents suffered quite unnecessarily from the dirt and filth
generated by "conglomerations of hawkers."
However, he assured the Council that as part of the build-up of the
"Keep Hong Kong Clean" Campaign, the assistance of all hawkers and their
associations would be sought.
The Acting Director said the Government had for long been concerned about
the ineffectiveness of existing hawker control measures, under which a hawker
could go back in business on the streets with his returned equipment and
/commodities
Page 10Page 11