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Wednesday, December 13, 1972
METHODS OF STREET CLEANSING TO BE MODERNISED
Recruitment Of Cleansing Workers Improved
**
The Urban Services Department is continually seeking ways and
means of modernising and improving its present methods of street cleansing
in order to move away from the existing labour intensive organisation.
The Director of Urban Services, the Hon. D.R.W. Alexander, stated
this today in the Legislative Council in reply to the Hon. James Wu,
However, he said there are limitations to what that can be done and
"we ourselves recognize the present shortcomings and need no prompting in our
search for improvements which might be feasible in the Hong Kong situation."
The Director disclosed that since the introduction of the recent
increase in wages and obnoxious duty allowance, there has been a marked im-
provement in the recruitment of labourers for the Cleansing Division of his
department.
"Where earlier in the year, we had 300 vacancies, we now have only
50. However, the rate of turnover remains high,'
As regards the final disposal of refuse, Mr. Alexander said there
is considerable difficulty in Hong Kong about finding suitable sites both for
incinerators and dumps, but he assured the Council that the departments concerned
bave taken intensive action to solve this problem.
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