Sessional_Paper_1947 — Page 15

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It is particularly desirable that it should be made clear that main roads, the entrances to hotels, restaurants, theatres, wharves, markets, schools and large public buildings or private office buildings, are places where hawkers,-with the exception of a strictly limited number of newspaper hawkers,-should on no account be allowed to hawk.

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The control and allocation of all such hawkers-streets and sites should be vested in the Urban Council which should be responsible for the working out of the present suggested plan in detail and its subsequent administration.

23. We should mention that this plan for hawkers markets met with the approval generally of the Chairmen of the Hawkers Guilds and of most of the individuals and organisations which gave us their views and to whom we put it. It would thus be reasonable to call on the officers of the Hawkers Guilds to persuade their members to co-operate in the putting into effect of this scheme.

24. As a means whereby hawkers might be induced to accept pitches in hawkers markets situated further away from the central districts of the town, we consider that rents prescribed for pitches should be on a sliding scale and that those more remote from the centre of the town should cost less than those nearer the centre of the town and in the more populous districts or in the vicinity of regular public markets.

25. To facilitate control of hawking in the hawkers market areas we recommend that in addition to carrying their ordinary licences hawkers should be required to display on their clothing a plaque bearing their photograph and the name of the street where they are licensed to hawk.

26. In the allotment of sites in these hawkers markets we recommend that preference be given to persons of Hong Kong birth, to persons who by possession of a rice-ration card or otherwise can establish consider- able length of Hong Kong residence, and to the aged, defective, or destitute, provided always that an applicant is a fit and responsible person to hold a licence and is possessed of sufficient physical and mental abilities to ensure that prescribed regulations are complied with.

27. We consider that at night between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. it is essential that all hawkers markets should be cleared to allow the sanitary department to proceed with its work of cleansing without interference.

V. PRIVATE MARKETS.

28. We recommend for consideration that, if an insufficient number of Government hawkers markets in side streets or areas resumed as above can be established to accommodate all those who may justifiably have a claim to continue hawking here for the time being, the establish- ment of privately owned hawkers markets should be facilitated as an interim measure. By this scheme a landowner might receive assistance to clear his land of debris and would then be permitted to pave it and let out spaces thereon to licensed hawkers at a rental prescribed by the Urban Council. The landowner in such cases would be responsible for the observance of sanitary regulations on the property. We understand that a scheme of this nature has been successfully tried in Singapore and the Municipal Ordinance of the (former) Straits Settlements embodies provisions enabling the establishment of private markets.

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