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mainly concerned. Therefore, I support mandatory confiscation of hawkers' equipment or commodities which will put teeth into our law enforcement and is one of the best ways of hawker control. As I mentioned in a previous open meeting, it is one of many means of controlling hawking and discouraging unlicensed hawking. There should be more measures taken in solving the complicated hawker problem according to our agreed aims provided we tackle the problem system- atically and conscientiously. We all know that there are many irre- gularities in hawking business including sub-letting, large scale hawking controlled by families or rackets, etc. which contravene our hawker policy. If the irregularities can be rectified, it will be a great step forward in solving the problem as the number of hawkers can be reduced and more hawker stall sites will be made available. This is a huge task and can only be achieved if the Department has adequate enforcement staff. The Council has already approved the establishment of an additional G.D. Team which should be further increased if necessary. The Department should undertake a complete survey in order to freeze the hawker situation at its present state. When the situation is clarified, irregularities rectified, succession policy cancelled, and hope- fully more land for hawker re-siting allocated by the Government, the Council could then consider issuing licenses to unlicensed but established hawkers provided that they could meet the criteria which the Council must set up in detail after deliberation. This will be a long and difficult process but will be achieved with our determination and support of the public, as well as understanding of the genuine hawker operating a small scale business.

With these remarks, Mr. Chairman, I support the motion.

MR. WONG SHIU-CHEUCK (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, last year on the occasion of the Urban Council Annual Conventional Debate, I spoke at length on the need to provide rapidly more facilities on the one hand, including the provision of more and better cremation facilities as well as funeral parlour facilities, and on the other hand, the need to improve drastically the amenity standard of our public cemeteries. I am pleased to report that the Department has responded splendidly to the suggestions of the Council and very considerable progress was made. However, as far as the amenity and general management of our public cemeteries is concerned, a lot more still has to be done rapidly even though we have made an excellent start. Our aim must be that the amenity and general management standard of all of our public cemeteries, particularly those which cater for the Chinese public, must be brought up to the same existing standard of the Hong Kong Cemetery, previously known as the Colonial Cemetery

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for Europeans. When both types of cemeteries for the Chinese and Europeans have been brought up to the same standard, the amenity standard in respect of both types should be further improved to cope with the rising expectations of a prosperous Hong Kong. This then must be our aim and nothing short of this would be expected by the public. Being the only municipal authority run entirely by unofficials, the Urban Council, I am sure, could and would rise up to the occasion and meet this demand. Consequently, I expect to see in my capacity as Chairman of the Cemeteries, Crematoria and Funeral Parlours Select Committee, more and more suggestions from the Department both in respect of staff proposals and also in respect of amenity develop- ment proposals concerning the public cemeteries in the coming year. I could envisage rapid and substantial progress in the years to come if the Department would keep up its momentum. Needless to say I trust that the Director of Urban Services will bring all the public cemetries in the New Territories up to the standard pioneered by the Urban Council.

I have taken the trouble of reiterating some of what I have already said on previous occasions because the field of cemeteries, crematoria and funeral parlours is not a field which usually gets the limelight and many not consequently get all the due consideration by default. Yet it is one of the expanding fields of services that the Urban Council provides and alas it is a field in which the services would touch eventually every member of the public when his term comes for the next world. Consequently, it is an important field of work. Because it has not been getting the limelight in the past, I have the distinct feeling that the standard of services in this field has fallen much behind the expectations of a prosperous Hong Kong. The impression one gets is that consciously or subconsciously the municipal authorities are aiming to provide only the barest minimum, to such an extent that it has not met the expectations of the public and that it has created a situation in which private and profit-making funeral services have been able to make a killing at the time when members of the bereaved family should need some positive guidance and help from the authorities. We are still facing a situation in which people with selfish vested interests are still trying to spread the idea that an illegal burial in the countryside somewhere in the New Territories is somehow a more dignified way of treating the dead than having them buried in the public cemeteries. Through our failings in the past, we have exacer- bated the situation. We must make burial in public cemeteries an attractive proposition to the public.

Turning now to a subject which I would really talk about today, the subject is our new Hung Hom Public Funeral Hall due to be