XN000022-1972-08-05 — Page 3

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Saturday, August 5, 1972

HARBOUR COLLECTION SERVICES PARTIALLY SUCCESSFUL

Three new harbour cleansing services started by the Marine Department

last month are meeting with reasonable succes5.

Since July 19, five sampans have been working within the Yau Ma Tei

and Causeway Bay typhoon shelters to provide a boat-to-boat refuse collection

service for the 14,000 people living there.

A spokesman for the Pollution Control Unit said today that the service

at present was not working as well as expected because the boat people were so

used to dumping refuse into the harbour.

He hoped the publicity connected with the "Keep Hong Kong Clean"

campaign will educate these people as to "what we are trying to do."

The sampana are now collecting about four to five tons of refuse every

day. "But there is a lot more we can pick up," the spokesman added.

A scavenging service was also introduced last month for the Port of

Aberdeen, where rapid developments in the past few years have resulted in an

increase in refuse being dumped into the harbour,

The service is provided by one mechanised cargo boat and six sampens

for more than, 2,000 boats in the harbour.

Boat-to-boat collection in Aberdeen is difficult to carry out because

most of the fishing vessels in the harbour are moving in and out. constantly.

The third new operation introduced last month is a free ship-to-ship

refuse collection service in Victoria Harbour.

The spokesman