CO129-489 - Governor Sir Stubbs & Sir Clementi - 1925 [8-12] — Page 414

13

HAWKERS' LICENCES.

As regards the Hawkers' licences to which members have referred, I think it is realised that we have to maintain some proportion between the number actually required or who get some sort of livelihood from hawking and the block in the streets caused by hawkers' stalls I have in crowded parts of the city. resisted attempts by the Captain Super- intendent of Police to reduce the number below certain figures, and I have gone carefully into his arguments on this ques- tion of obstruction. The Senior Member of Council and the Chinese members can rest assured that this matter of Hawkers' licences will not be lost sight of. Unless there is real reason for reducing the licences, either owing to obstruction or to

certain classes of the fact that hawkers are unnecessary, the number will not be reduced.

REFUSE DESTRUCTORS.

The Senior Unofficial member and his colleague referred to the question of re- fuse destructors, and I may say at once that when I came to this Colony I came with knowledge of refuse destructors in the Straits Settlements and Malay States which made me think they were wonder- ful things to perform two offices-that of destroying refuse and supplying a very good class of manure. I tried to impress my views upon Sir Henry May and found him entirely unsympathetic. I consider- ed I was in the right and thought they should be erected in this Colony. Since then we have called for reports from various places, and hon. members will remember that the Acting Colonial Secre- tary, Mr. Fletcher, in the debate on the Budget in 1923 referred to this matter. I am going to read you his remarks be- cause they converted me to the opinion that refuse destructors here are unneces- Mr.. the matter

sary. Dealing with

Fletcher said:

"It was asked that we should have an incinerator for the destruction of rubbish. That question has been gone into exhaustively on three occasions, first in 1901, and again in 1906, when reports were laid on the table in this Council, and again in 1921. On each occasion we asked particulars of Singa- pore, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, and other towns and the replies were most dis- couraging becauuse of the enormous expense. The capital cost of building runs as high as six and a half dollars per ton of rubbish consumed annually, against our cost of eighty cents for all our plant and material. The rubbish is largely of a light vegetable nature and it requires a third of its weight in fuel to consume and leaves a third in slag to be got rid of. The destructor re- quires complete renewal once every ten years. The question of the disposal of the slag is also a matter of great dif- ficulty. At Home it is very much used for road repairs, but here we have a much better and entirely accessible material in granite. Therefore, this slag would have to be carted away. It could be used in reclamation but it would have to be taken there. The nuisance of these collecting stations on the Praya would not necessarily be done away with. The town is very narrow and the destructor would have to be at one end or the other and all refuse would have to be taken along the streets as now. An incinerator most be more or less a nuisance to people in the neighbourhood, and I think it would cause much more trouuble than the find- ing of an occasional cabbage leaf on a bathing beach now does." That statement to my mind is con- vincing.

409