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Wednesday, September 19, 1973
HOUSING SHCRIETARY TO MEET ESTATE SHOP TENANTS
Mr. Ian Lightbody, Secretary for Housing, has invited representatives
of shopkeepers in public housing estates and estate Kaifong members to meet
hin on Friday (September 21) to discuss the new shop tenancy agreements pro-
posed recently by the Housing Authority.
Mr. Roger Lobo, Chairman of the Management Committee of the Housing
Authority will also attend. Nearly 11,000 shopkeepers in the older public
housing estates at present hold their premises on a month-to-month tenancy
card basis. Under the new system they are being asked to sign a long term
agreement.
Since the new agreement was proposed shopkeepers and estate Kaifongs
have sent representatives to the Housing Department objecting to some of its
conditions.
A Housing Department spokesman said today: "We have met representatives
of several shopkeepers groups and listened sympathetically to the points they
Tiere soos to be some misapprehension that the main object to the
raised.
agreement is to undermine their security of tenure.
#This in fact is not the case. We have said repeatedly that we have
no intention of terminating tenancies."
In a letter going out to each individual shopkeeper today, Mr. Ralph
Husband, Deputy Director of Estate Management, commenting on the coming meeting
between lir. Lightbody and shopkeepers representatives, says:
"I am sure that these discussions will help considerably to clarify
the various problems which some shop tenants see in these new arrangements, and
the department will then consider what can be done to meet these difficulties."
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