XN000022-1974-03-14 — Page 16

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Thursday, March 14, 1974

"Why it should have taken only until now for the government

to make the general public realize some decisive action is being taken

to curb rice profiteering at the retail level," he said, "is a lesson

which should be analysed and stored for future application bridging the communication gap."

He urged the government to co-operate with the City District

Office Area Committees, the Mutual Aid Committees, the Kaifong Associations

and other organisations in appealing to rice retailers to maintain reasonable

retail prices and to report to the government any blatant case of profiteering.

Commenting on the budgetary proposal on vehicle licence fees,

Mr. Cheong-Leen regarded as "over-simplified and wrong" the approach the

government adopted in restructuring the six platforms for private car licence

fees into two platforms.

"The increases based on the two platform structure are not only

steep, they are also unreasonable from the point of view of the general

public," he noted.

He hoped that the government would revert back to the six platform

fee structure for private care so that the burden of licence fee increases

is more equitably distributed.

As regards the 100-percent increase in licence fee of public light

buses, Mr. Cheong-Leen maintained that it should be replaced by some "fair

and reasonable" proposals which will not impose hardship on the livelihood

of their operators.

The proposal