HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
ings and keep the communal parts of them clean and unobstructed. There is sometimes just as bad squatting in the communal parts of these multi-storey buildings as those on vacant land or roof tops. Another thing that I urge the Government to review is the present danger of the water authority cutting off the water to these multi-storey buildings if one or more of the flat owners do not contribute their own part of the water bill.
We have co-operated in the anti-cholera campaign, and although Hong Kong has been declared a cholera port on two occasions recently, there has not been an epidemic. Is this, I ask you, Sir, to be endangered by thousands of people without water in these multi-storey buildings? Either make it compulsory for each flat to have a separate water meter or arrange the taxes which the citizens of Hong Kong pay to include an element for water like in nearly every large city in the world today.
Coming now to hawkers, as Chairman of the Hawker Appeal Sub-Committee of the Hawker Management Committee notice has been brought forcibly to my committee of a number of rackets which the average hawker especially the crippled or widowed hawker is subject to. It is not just that on a rough estimate over 50% of our licences are illegally sublet, but that this subletting is often done by force or fear of force. Is it really good for Hong Kong to give hawker licences as free welfare assistance or instead should not the Department of Social Welfare receive an adequate proportion of our whole budget (not the 1% that they receive at present) to meet the Public Assistance needed and leave the hawking trade to people who know how to hawk. In my opinion it is, the welfare case, the widow, the cripple, the aged, and indeed sometimes even the children of our community, that are being subject to the inducements, very often with the threats of force to sublet and very often they give up their pitch to another for a fixed small monthly amount.
I want now to say something about victims of uninsured drivers. Great pressure was brought by the United Kingdom on insurance companies at the end of the last War including the threat of compulsory legislation in consequence of which the Insurance Companies got together and set up a Motor Insurance Bureau for compensation for such victims. They then entered into a contract with the United Kingdom Government for the satisfaction of claims for personal injuries including death when there was a motor car accident involving an uninsured driver. I am not going into details, but I would say that a number of occasions have occurred over the past few years where a man, a breadwinner has been killed or gravely injured in a motor car accident and his family reduced to near starvation because of these uninsured drivers. If a Motor Insurance Bureau can be set up in England as it was set up as long ago as 1946, surely the same thing can be done in Hong Kong today.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
I would also like to mention the subject of fireworks at Chinese New Year. Basically the ban on firework originally instituted because of the 1967 riots is now being continued partly I suspect because of the danger to life and limb from indiscriminate throwing of fireworks at Chinese New Year. Nevertheless fireworks are traditional at Chinese New Year and if this ban is going to continue then the Government through the Urban Council and the District Office and other departments should organize terrific displays of fireworks itself at that time both in the harbour and at places like Tsuen Wan, and Tai Po in the New Territories.
Finally I must say something on the Ombudsman. Be it called Ombudsman or whatever other name you like, I have had the honour to sit as a member of the Committee of Justice that produced the Ombudsman Report and if the present policy of the Government is not to have elected members onto the Legislative Council then an Ombudsman, in my opinion, is even a more vital and immediate necessity, whether he be appointed by the Legislative Council or indeed by this Urban Council. We are never closer to the citizens of Hong Kong than in our ward but we are only, volunteer, part time, Urban Councillors, just as much as the much advocated UMELCO is only part time, volunteer, Legislative and Executive Councillors. The Ombudsman must have access to nearly all the files as more elaborately specified in the Justice Report. He must have access to every department, to go into every Department, to examine the working of a department and his reports must be made public. The Government seems to think that the appointment of an Ombudsman would be to show up the short comings of government servants. That has not been the experience in other places. The Ombudsman indeed, largely enhances the real prestige of Government and experience has shown that for every one case of real injustice that the Ombudsman has disclosed, there has been about nine cases where the officers of Government have taken the right decision. The real cause of complaint in those cases was that nobody had really taken the trouble to explain the reasons to the person that was aggrieved. In the United Kingdom, where one used to hear the expression "I will see my MP about this", it has been shown nevertheless that there was a need for an ombudsman called a Parliamentary Commissioner. How much more so is there a need here where the outlet of seeing an M.P. is denied to the citizens of Hong Kong because of no elections to the Legislative Council. Justice has already disclosed that the Government had in draft form a bill creating an ombudsman called a commissioner, now let Government get on with it and do not let us have to wait for more riots to rocket the Government into action. There are local reforms which the Governor promised the people of Hong Kong at the time of the riots in 1967 which have so far not been implemented. With the comparative calm a laissez-faire attitude has come back again in nearly all aspects of Government. I issue this
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ings and keep the communal parts of them clean and unobstructed. There is sometimes just as bad squatting in the communal parts of these multi-storey buildings as those on vacant land or roof tops. Another thing that I urge the Government to review is the present danger of the water authority cutting off the water to these multi- storey buildings if one or more of the flat owners do not contribute their own part of the water bill.
We have co-operated in the anti-cholera campaign, and although Hong Kong has been declared a cholera port on two occasions recently, there has not been an epidemic. Is this, I ask you, Sir, to be endangered by thousands of people without water in these multi-storey buildings? Either make it compulsory for each flat to have a separate water meter or arrange the taxes which the citizens of Hong Kong pay to include an element for water like in nearly every large city in the world today.
Coming now to hawkers, as Chairman of the Hawker Appeal Sub- Committee of the Hawker Management Committee notice has been brought forcibly to my committee of a number of rackets which the average hawker especially the crippled or widowed hawker is subject to. It is not just that on a rough estimate over 50% of our licences are illegally sublet, but that this subletting is often done by force or fear of force. Is it really good for Hong Kong to give hawker licences as free welfare assistance or instead should not the Department of Social Welfare receive an adequate proportion of our whole budget (not the 1% that they receive at present) to meet the Public Assistance needed and leave the hawking trade to people who know how to hawk. In my opinion it is, the welfare case, the widow, the cripple, the aged, and indeed sometimes even the children of our community, that are being subject to the inducements, very often with the threats of force to sublet and very often they give up their pitch to another for a fixed small monthly amount.
I want now to say something about victims of uninsured drivers. Great pressure was brought by the United Kingdom on insurance companies at the end of the last War including the threat of compulsory legislation in consequence of which the Insurance Companies got together and set up a Motor Insurance Bureau for compensation for such victims. They then entered into a contract with the United Kingdom Government for the satisfaction of claims for personal injuries including death when there was a motor car accident involving an uninsured driver. I am not going into details, but I would say that a number of occasions have occurred over the past few years where a man, a breadwinner has been killed or gravely injured in a motor car accident and his family reduced to near starvation because of these uninsured drivers. If a Motor Insurance Bureau can be set up in England as it was set up as long ago as 1946, surely the same thing can be done in Hong Kong today.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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I would also like to mention the subject of fireworks at Chinese New Year. Basically the ban on firework originally instituted because of the 1967 riots is now being continued partly I suspect because of the danger to life and limb from indiscriminate throwing of fireworks at Chinese New Year. Nevertheless fireworks are traditional at Chinese New Year and if this ban is going to continue then the Government through the Urban Council and the District Office and other depart- ments should organize terrific displays of fireworks itself at that time both in the harbour and at places like Tsuen Wan, and Tai Po in the New Territories.
Finally I must say something on the Ombudsman. Be it called Ombudsman or whatever other name you like, I have had the honour to sit as a member of the Committee of Justice that produced the Ombudsman Report and if the present policy of the Government is not to have elected members onto the Legislative Council then an Ombuds- man, in my opinion, is even a more vital and immediate necessity, whether he be appointed by the Legislative Council or indeed by this Urban Council. We are never closer to the citizens of Hong Kong than in our ward but we are only, volunteer, part time, Urban Councillors, just as much as the much advocated UMELCO is only part time, volunteer, Legislative and Executive Councillors. The Ombudsman must have access to nearly all the files as more elaborately specified in the Justice Report. He must have access to every department, to go into every Department, to examine the working of a department and his reports must be made public. The Government seems to think that the appointment of an Ombudsman would be to show up the short comings of government servants. That has not been the experience in other places. The Ombudsman indeed, largely enhances the real prestige of Government and experience has shown that for every one case of real injustice that the Ombudsman has disclosed, there has been about nine cases where the officers of Government have taken the right decision. The real cause of complaint in those cases was that nobody had really taken the trouble to explain the reasons to the person that was aggrieved. In the United Kingdom, where one used to hear the expression "I will see my MP about this", it has been shown never- theless that there was a need for an ombudsman called a Parliamentary Commissioner. How much more so is there a need here where the outlet of seeing an M.P. is denied to the citizens of Hong Kong because of no elections to the Legislative Council. Justice has already disclosed that the Government had in draft form a bill creating an ombudsman called a commissioner, now let Government get on with it and do not let us have to wait for more riots to rocket the Government into action. There are local reforms which the Governor promised the people of Hong Kong at the time of the riots in 1967 which have so far not been implemented. With the comparative calm a laissez-faire attitude has come back again in nearly all aspects of Government. I issue this
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