1972 — Page 156

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hawkers who are really shop-keepers extending their shops onto the

street.

Hawkers, like everyone else, do not want to create the problem which confronts us today, and least of all do they want to cause any friction with the authority. I say that the problem has arisen and has remained with us for so long is because of the half-hearted and insincere way the Government has been dealing with the problem. Whilst it has been the declared policy of this Council to move hawkers off-street and to control hawking, the Government has surprisingly done little or nothing to (i) provide sufficient land or sites where hawkers can carry on their trade without affecting other members of the public, and (ii) offer fair and reasonable conditions of service commensurate with responsibility to attract adequate manpower to control hawkers.

Our avaricious and short-sighted Government that takes great delight in counting the dollars fetched from land sales, thinks it is too expensive and too losing a proposition to offer its money-making land to be used as hawker sites. I would remind those concerned that if they persist in this manner the hawker problem can never be solved and the promised betterment of quality of life can never be attained.

I now commend to those concerned the method for solving the problem. The method in essence is to set a target to resite all our hawkers into off-street bazaars or sites and to recruit sufficient man- power to control hawking:

(i) Work out the stall space area that will be required to accom- modate all hawkers in off-street bazaars. For example, if a fixed-pitch measures 4' x 3', this occupies 12 square feet. It follows that to resite 10,000 hawkers a year some 120,000 square feet of space will be required, without taking into account the area required for circulation or passages. I leave it to those concerned to work out the approximate floor area so required, and then set a target to provide the necessary space within that year. Assuming that 150,000 square feet is required for the 10,000 hawkers and the target is to provide 150,000 square feet annually, then within a matter of 5 to 6 years we will achieve our objective.

(ii) Review the number of licences granted, say, 10 to 15 years ago to hawkers on social welfare grounds. Because through the passage of time circumstances of some of these licensed hawkers may well have changed for the better and they no longer required to depend on hawking for a livelihood. In such a case these licences should not be renewed. The number of hawkers requiring space will correspondingly be reduced.

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(iii) Proceed immediately to redevelope our existing markets into multi-storey buildings so as to provide maximum floor area for market stalls as well as hawker stalls. This is to make more economic use of immediately available land and our markets into modern super-markets. In such supermarkets equipped with mechanized means of conveyance to and from upper floors, such floors can be designated for specified hawkers, and thus providing and centralizing hawkers in premises within which to carry on their trade in an orderly Critics to this suggestion may say that shopping habits of our residents do not favour patronizing stalls on upper floors. I can best answer this by referring them to the success of the many high rise department stores.

manner.

(iv) Offer fair and reasonable conditions of service to attract suit- able persons into the hawker control force to manage and control hawkers.

Sir, what I am advocating, in brief, is accommodation coupled with effective control in order to solve our hawker problem.

Before resuming my seat, I want to thank members of the Urban Council and Urban Services Department for their good work through the past year, and for their co-operation and ready services to us Members of this Council. In particular I want to convey my apprecia- tion to those officers in the Urban Services Department charged with the management of hawkers for their fine work in keeping the status quo of the problem notwithstanding the pitiful number of the hawker control force which is many times below establishment.

Mr. Chairman, with these remarks, I have pleasure in supporting the motion before Council. (Applause).

MISS CECILIA L. Y. YEUNG (In Cantonese): -Mr. Chairman, this is only the second Annual Conventional Debate that I have taken part in and I want to confine myself to three subjects, Education, Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign and the Housing Programme.

First, Education, nothing is now being done about education and the Urban Council. There were proposals in the past for education to come under the Urban Council or for the Urban Council to have representatives on the Education Board. I am informed by those who have been longer on the Urban Council than myself that it was, at one time, accepted by Government that the Urban Council could run their own schools. What has happened to all these proposals? The Urban Council should be vitally interested in education because education is of vital importance to the men in the street. In most places in the world, education is either under local authority or there

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