1966 — Page 194

279

360

HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

Page 194 of 279

361

MOTION.

Continuation of debate on the following motion moved by Mr. A. de O. SALES at a meeting of the Council held on 29th November, 1966:

That this Council endorse the Statement of Aims for 1967.

CHAIRMAN:-Ladies and Gentlemen, the debate on the Statement of Aims for 1967, which was adjourned from the meeting held on 29th November, will now resume.

The first speaker on this motion today is Mrs. Ellen Li.

MRS. ELLEN LI SHU-PUI, O.B.E.:-Mr. Chairman, my senior colleagues have already had their say on many vital and popular topics such as education, medical services, the enlargement of the scope and function of the Urban Council, Resettlement, hawkers, etc. etc. Very few subjects are left for comment without repetition and without going beyond the purview of this Council. I am therefore going to con- centrate this afternoon on the question of good housekeeping and efficient management by this Council through stricter control and super- vision by licensing.

At present, there is no over-all planning as regards a central licensing system: what kinds of establishments should be licensed and who the licensing and prosecuting authority should be. The practising procedure now is that various types of licences are issued by various authorities, but the prosecuting authority is usually the police.

Let me illustrate my point by referring to some public places such as hotels, boarding houses, bars, dancing schools, mahjong schools, bath houses, etc. etc. Some of these have to have several licences or permits from several different authorities and some do not need a licence at all. Take a restaurant night club, for instance, the restaurant is licensed by the Urban Council through the Food and Food Premises Ordinance, the bar by the Licensing Justices and the floor-show, if any, by the police. In my opinion, we need a central authority which issues the licences, thus controls and supervises the operation of the establish- ments as well as prosecutes any operation without a licence; and this central authority should be the Urban Council. I understand that up to this moment we have at least 20 different kinds of licences and permits issued by this Council. About 8 or 9 by the Commissioner of Police and 1 by the Licensing Justices of the Peace.

In advocating the necessity of control and supervision by licence, I now turn my attention to boarding houses, the so-called soft drink bars and many such fancy places and places with fancy names which do not need a licence to operate. Those of us who are interested

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in the social and moral welfare of our young people have expressed grave concern over the social evils breeding in some of these places which corrupt the minds of our young, because we know that some of these places are only a cover for brothels and illicit assignations. It is in these so-called hotels and boarding houses where so many young girls are abducted and seduced, where wild parties are held, young hoodlums gather and gangster activities originate. The Urban Council should seek to control and supervise these places by licence. Some may argue that the Council's only concern in these places is for public hygiene, but if this is so, then we are indeed no more than a Sanitary Board.

An Ad Hoc Committee was instituted some years ago to study the possibility of licensing the hotels and boarding houses. The dis- cussions went on for at least 2 years, but the whole project was finally squashed because it was thought to be too complicated, especially when the police were not too keen to add further duties to their already heavy commitments. I suggest that the whole question of our licensing procedure and system should be examined by Government and this Council.

Another subject I would like to comment on is the advertising signs over public thoroughfares. I asked a question 2 years ago in this Council about the possibility of these huge signs becoming a danger to the public during the typhoon season and causing an obstruction to fire-fighting operations outside multi-storey buildings. The official answers to these questions were the usual kind that there were few instances of accidents caused by falling signs and that they were not fire hazards. But surely we are not going to wait until someone is killed before the signs can be considered dangerous to public safety. Recently, these signs have been getting bigger and bigger and very often go right across the street. Granted, they may not be the direct source of actual fires in the buildings, but surely, with all the iron scaffolding criss-crossing like spider webs, these huge signs must have been an obvious hindrance to the fire-fighting and rescue operations? The extra minutes wasted in manoeuvering the fire engines into position so that the ladders can reach the upper floors from between these signs and their criss-crossing bars, may mean life or death to the people trapped inside the building.

Many complaints have been lodged with individual members of this Council and some letters of complaint have appeared in the papers. I feel strongly that the size and position of these advertisements should be controlled by licence, so long as they encroach over crown land. A sub-committee of this Council is working on this question and let us hope that some concrete proposals will be put forward in the near future.