1964 — Page 194

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Page 194 of 312

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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

(3) MR. H. CHEONG-LEEN moved the following motion:-

This Council continue to be concerned over the insanitary and filthy state of our streets resulting primarily from the fact that sufficient cleansing labourers are not available because of the low wages offered by Government and urge Government to urgently take remedial action.

He said Mr. Chairman, you will recall that I raised a question at the August 1964 meeting of this Council on the unsatisfactory refuse collection operations in Fa Yuen Street, due to the fact that cleansing staff and refuse collection vehicles were insufficient. From the point of view of public health, the situation in Fa Yuen Street was aggravated by reason of the rubbish collection point being just in front of a hawker bazaar where food was being sold. This was not only annoying to the residents living nearby; it was also insanitary. At the August meeting, you gave me an assurance, Sir, that everything possible would be done to completely clear this particular rubbish collection point at least twice a day. That situation is typical of the many other street cleansing problems we are having on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon, to the intense annoyance of many tax-paying and rate-paying residents, and also to the utter embarrassment of the Urban Councillors.

Permit me to read out the contents of a letter I have received from half a dozen shops and a number of residents in Yu Chow Street, Kowloon :

"We are residents of Nos. 243-249 Yu Chow Street. Resulting from the typhoons we have had during the past few months, much rubbish has accumulated in the street at Nos. 243-245 Yu Chow Street. For several months, this rubbish has not been cleared, and every day it has a foul smell. The residents nearby suffer very much. It surely has a pernicious effect on their health. The ground floor of No. 245 Yu Chow Street is occupied by the Red Plum Cake Shop. Because of the foul smell emanating from the accumulated rubbish, customers have begun to stay away from the cake shop, with a consequent loss of business. If this condition persists much longer, we might have an epidemic, and who can tell what danger there will be to the health and the lives of our families. We there- fore appeal to you to get the Urban Council to quickly clean up this pile of rubbish and thus protect our health.”

Mr. Chairman, I pass on this letter to you for immediate action, (at this point Mr. CHEONG-LEEN displayed the original letter to Members) and in doing so, may I suggest, as an exercise in bilingualism, that you might check whether the English translation, which emanated from the Government Information Services, would be similar to the original in Chinese.

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As Members are aware, the primary reason why the Urban Services Department is still short of cleansing labourers is that the wages are too low. The starting pay of an Urban Services Department labourer is $148 per month. After nine years of service his pay goes up to $229, with all allowances included. How Government expects a man with a family to live on this low income is the "mystery of the year”.

Rightly or wrongly, the general public has the impression that Government has been more anxious about increasing still higher the salaries of Civil Servants in the top bracket, and has been lackadaisical in doing anything about the low wages of the ordinary labourer in Government Service. It has dawned on me, Mr. Chairman, that the Hong Kong Civil Service is today divided into "Two Nations". If this continues much longer, I would not be at all surprised if Disraeli should soon appear among us to gather material for writing a book on social reform in the Hong Kong Civil Service. (Laughter).

Last week, Mr. Chairman, my Civic Association colleague, Mr. CHEUNG Wing-in, and I visited the Kowloon Bay resite area where there are nearly 20,000 residents. We were told that there were in- sufficient public latrines for half of the residents living there, on account of the fact that the Urban Services Department was short of labourers. Council Members will agree that the shortage of public latrines in the Kowloon Bay resite area is certainly not making the work of the Resettlement Department officers any easier. And we in the Urban Council are to a certain extent responsible. But we will not be able to remedy the situation unless and until Government makes a decision to pay more reasonable wages to the underpaid labourers in the Urban Services Department. Only then will the Urban Services Department be in a better position to recruit the full number of cleansing labourers permitted and to justify the payment of rates by the public to keep their streets clean and free from accumulated rubbish.

With these remarks, Mr. Chairman, I move the motion that stands in my name.

DR. P. F. Woo:—Mr. Chairman, my friend Mr. CHEONG-LEEN, Who has travelled widely, is very much impressed with the cleanliness of the streets in big cities such as Stockholm, Geneva, Paris and Vienna, and has always been anxious that the streets in Hong Kong should be as clean as they are. He initiated the "Keep Your City Clean Cam- paign", and he has frequently passed on to me posters, journals and literature on how to make a city clean, with the hope that I should propagate his wish in the Health Education Select Committee. While I regret I have so far failed to carry out the mission, I am in full sympathy with his concern with the cleanliness of our city, and I have much pleasure in seconding his motion to-day.