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from 20 to 10 years ago. The Hawkers Select Committee has recently decided to restrict the number of pedlar licences issued to juveniles, but where they are from a hawker family to permit instead one or two juvenile mem- bers of that family to go on their parents' licences as assistants.

As to the third part of this question, it has been repeatedly raised by Mr. Henry Hu since he came on this Council and on the Hawkers Select Committee. At the Annual Conventional Debate in December 1966, three Members of this Council spoke of the need for technical training which would enable young people to obtain satisfactory jobs in industry rather than turn to hawking for a living. In his reply, the Chairman, Urban Council, said, in part, that he sympathized with this view but was doubtful whether it would be desirable to set up such technical training solely or even principally for the benefit of hawkers. Later he went on to say that it would be neces- sary in any case to wait for the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Industrial Training which was set up in 1965 to advise Government on the general question of industrial training. He finally commented that, even at the present time, jobs were available in factories, but hawkers were not willing to take them up since they could earn a better living by hawking and in conditions of greater freedom. For myself I find quite young children obviously being sent out by their parents to hawk, and the only answer to this in my opinion is compulsory free education in conjunction with a large expansion in indus- trial training after the juveniles have left school. It is essential for any real solution of the hawker problem in future years that the children of hawker families should not be allowed to grow up on the streets, thus making 3 or 4 hawker families in the next generation to every 1 hawker family today.

MR. CHEONG-LEEN:-Mr. Chairman, I quite agree with the Chair- man of the Hawkers Select Committee that we should expand our education system, and as a first step towards compulsory free education we should have universal primary education. Could I ask you, Mr. Chairman, to be good enough to enquire from the Labour Department whether they are following up a suggestion which I made sometime ago, and I think other members might have made the same suggestion, that there should be a Youth Employment Centre established by Govern- ment and, in asking the Labour Department what steps are being taken to establish that Youth Employment Centre, to enquire at the same time what provisions will be made to assist unlicensed juvenile hawkers?

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CHAIRMAN: -Yes, Sir, I shall be quite willing to pass your remarks

on to the Labour Department.

MR. CHEONG-LEEN:-A request, Sir.

(4) MR. HENRY H. L. Hu asked the following question:-

Could the Chairman inform the Council what is the relation- ship between the Council on the one hand and the Urban Services Department and Social Welfare Department on the other? Who has the right to issue hawkers' licences: the Urban Services Department or the Urban Council? In what way can the Social Welfare Department assist this Council in discharging its statutory functions?

THE CHAIRMAN replied as follows:

Under the Urban Council Ordinance, Section 55, the Urban Services Department is responsible for carrying into effect decisions of the Council made in exercise of its statutory powers, and of its Select Committees or Members to whom it has delegated its powers. The Social Welfare Depart- ment is a separate Government department with no The Director of statutory relationship to the Council. Social Welfare, who is Government's chief adviser on welfare matters, is an Official Member of the Council. Under the Public Health and Urban Services Ordinance the Urban Council is the authority for the making of regula- tions governing the licensing of hawkers and for the issue of the licences themselves. Under the authority of the Council, licences are issued by members of the Urban Services Department who have been appointed to be Assistant Secretaries of the Urban Council. The Social Welfare Department has no statutory powers as far as the issue of hawker licences is concerned, but subsequent to the Report on Hawkers in 1957, which was accepted by the Council, the Hawkers Select Committee decided with effect from 22nd February, 1958, that new fixed pitch licences should only be issued on compassionate grounds, and on the recommendation of the Director of Social Welfare. The Social Welfare Department investigates the circumstances of applicants for fixed pitch licences and bases its recommendation on a combination of various factors, including length of residence, income, ability to run a stall, physical handicap, and so on. This seems to ensure that the limited number of sites for fixed pitch

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