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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

With these observations, Mr. Chairman, I congratulate the staff and the Select Committee responsible for this able report which today has my fullest support.

MR. P. D. AU :-I rise to support your motion in accepting the Hawker Report. The Report has dealt with a comprehensive and realistic survey of the hawking problem in Hong Kong. It should, however, be borne in mind that this problem is inter- related to the unemployment problem in this Colony, as we only grant licences to the unemployed, and we have executed our policy largely on welfare basis.

I have served on the Hawkers Policy Select Committees for the past 5 years, and I know the great difficulties involved in tackling this problem, and I am happy to find that we have at last tackled it with a realistic approach.

I hope that the proposed Hawker Bazaar will soon be intro- duced, and I am sure that we can find suitable places for small business people to earn a livelihood without fear of extortion by the Triad society, without fear of police action in raiding which are so common near the market places, and also without fear of being arrested and hauled before the Magistrate's court to plead guilty and be fined.

I wish to refer to the agitation by the licencees of the cooked food stalls requesting the Council to adopt a more lenient view in our policy. I take this opportunity to point out that during the past 18 months we have repeatedly urged the licencees to look after the stalls, we have suspended some of their licences or re- located their stalls, and I believe we have done everything possible to control these stalls so that they would not deteriorate into open- air restaurants and would not cause serious obstruction to traffic or pedestrians, but all our efforts have been in vain.

It appears therefore that the licencees have little or no control over their stalls, and the actual operators ignore the warnings from this Council which were conveyed to them by the licencee and abuse by using as much area as possible in order to secure a bigger turnover. feel sure that the licencees will agree with me that this state of affairs cannot, and must not, continue. However, this has been going on for some time, and yet we have not had any definite action from the licencees to show us their intention of trading on a limited scale, as it was originally intended.

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This Report contains certain drastic recommendations which will be studied carefully before the enactment of new By-laws, and I hope that the licencees will look into their problem as realistically as the Council does and let us have some concrete proposals.

Mr. Li Yiu BOR:-1 rise to support your motion that the report on Hawkers be adopted by this Council.

First and foremost, I must congratulate all concerned, especially Mr. D. C. Bray, on a very interesting report which is as comprehensive as it is realistic. It is undoubtedly the outcome of much painstaking study of this important problem.

There are, however, a few points to which I should like to invite the attention of this Council. The first point is the question of the existing cooked-food stalls. As you are aware, Sir, these licences were issued on a welfare basis a number of years ago. It is now high time for this Council to find out whether or not the welfare grounds on which these licences were issued still exist, and whether or not these licences are in the hands of people who have obtained them by false pretences.

I have in my possession information of cases where a family has 3 or 4 licences. There is no need to mention how these licences were obtained, but it is enough to say that this state of affairs is most unsatisfactory, as our intention to help deserving members of the public to make an honest living has been abused.

I have also in my possession information of unprincipled people who have made use of 'dummies' as bona fide applicants for cooked-food stall licences. A widow with children, apparently a deserving welfare case, was asked to apply for a licence on the understanding that when it was granted, she would receive a sum of twenty or thirty dollars a month. This was probably done through people who seemed to have an inkling of the points system by which such licences were granted or refused. The result is that quite a number of licences have been issued to 'dummies', and that there are cases where one financier operates ten or twenty stalls.

You will know, Sir, that all this happened long ago. I am not trying to put any blame on anyone for this state of affairs, but I suggest that the Hawker (Policy) Select Committee do look

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