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cemeteries. In Hong Kong we have the Sai Wan Military Cemetery which is kept in a dignified and befitting manner and I am 100% in support of having dignified resting places for our fallen heroes. I am also in support of maintaining dignified resting places for the European members of our community. Equally I am also 100% in support of maintaining the same standard of management for the public cemeteries of the Chinese population which after all form the bulk of our com- munity. Big or small they all had their part to play in making Hong Kong what it is. We owe them the debt of bringing about a radical and rapid improvement in our management of the Chinese public cemeteries. We have tightened our stand on the allocation of more land to the private Chinese cemeteries of one kind or another. As a corollary to this approach we must at the same time ensure that our Chinese public cemeteries should be maintained in a state in which the public would not feel ashamed of having their dead buried there. This then must be our aim and this then the Department and the Council must strive together to achieve. I suggest that the Department should conduct an urgent review into the entire situation with a view to working out a programme of concrete steps towards improvement. We must increase significantly the staff to be deployed over the manage- ment of our Chinese public cemeteries. We must consciously make a start, if a belated start, on having some kind of amenity planning for our public cemeteries and we must above all ensure that the place is kept in a hygienic and dignified way.

Now that we are achieving reasonable progress on our other fronts, I commend this subject to the Urban Council and the Government as the subject to be urgently looked into the coming year.

(Mr. F. K. HU left the meeting and Mr. Peter C. K. CHAN arrived at this point.)

MR. SHUM CHOI-SANG (in Cantonese): -Mr. Chairman, with grad- ual economic upturn, many workers have returned to work in the commercial and industrial sectors this year. It seems that the pressure of hawker problem has been relieved. Nevertheless, the creation of the hawker permitted areas primarily geared to ease unemployment has posed another social problem. As far as this problem is concerned, there are a few points which call for immediate attention. They are:-

(i) Should the hawker permitted areas be allowed to remain? (ii) How to deal with the unlicensed hawkers?

(iii) How to solve the hawker problem in public housing estates?

The hawker permitted areas have now become the paradise of un- licensed hawkers, where they can hawk openly, free of any apprehension

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for being arrested or cleared. Although the HPA scheme was meant only to be a temporary buffer against unemployment, its very existence has indeed had great adverse effects on urban appearance, traffic, businesses of the shops and factories. If we cannot do away with these areas in the foreseeable future, then we must find ways and means to solve the aforesaid points.

To ensure a gradual improvement of the traffic condition and the appearance of the hawker permitted areas, we must first of all work out a stricter system of control and to do so, we should know clearly the number of hawkers and the actual hawking situation. This can be achieved by conducting a survey on the hawker permitted areas.

Enormous manpower and resources are of course required to carry out the survey and to exercise such control as is necessary.

Some people wonder whether the authorities concerned should explore ways and means to abolish the HPAs since they are a burden to the community. Now that the period of serious unemployment is over and all factories and commercial firms are recruiting new staff, is it high time then to channel the unlicensed hawkers back to the com- mercial and industrial sectors?

The hawkers in the HPAs fall into two categories. The first category consists of former commercial and industrial workers who had been thrown out of jobs and turned to hawking for a living. When the economic situation improves, most of them may rejoin the indus- trial and commercial work forces. The other category consists of those who have hawked for years. Hawking is a trade they know well, so they do not intend to change to other trades.

The latter category can be sub-divided into licensed and unlicensed hawkers, some of whom have even been hawking in the areas for years. It is therefore open to doubt whether the abolition of HPAs will make these hawkers voluntarily switch to other trades. As most of the haw- kers have no knowledge of other trades, the licensed ones will continue to hawk in the areas whereas the unlicensed ones will possibly trade on a mobile basis as before in order to avoid arrest. Thus, the problem of hawkers in permitted areas remains unsolved. The only possible result is that they will be decentralized instead of being centralized and will become illegal instead of being legalized.

Though some hawkers in HPAs have already taken up jobs again in the commercial and industrial fields, the number of hawkers still trading in these areas is estimated to be over ten thousand. We cannot