Page 83 of 174
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128
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
This is a clear admission that the number of hawkers in the streets has nothing to do with arrest and punishment, but with the economy of Hong Kong, the level of employment, the wage level, and the adequacy of public assistance for the unemployable/or the unemployed.
Moreover hawkers exist not only because of their own social conditions, but because of the needs of their customers.
If wages were higher, customers might buy all their goods from shops, where rents are high, and I can assure you because I shop from both, prices are much higher in shops than from hawkers. Hong Kong seems to aim at keeping wages low, rents high, and hawkers off the streets. These are three incompatible ingredients in our society. If we are to retain the evil of low wages, we must also accept the lesser and more honest evil of hawkers providing for our workers' needs.
Granted that there are more hawkers than we really need, what methods are there of reducing the number? Is it the best way to seize their goods and punish them, if necessary, by imprisonment? If that is what we really want, we had better release all the more dangerous criminals from the prisons, and let the police and the courts concentrate on sending these victims of our society to prison to suffer for our social neglect.
Surely the only way to reduce the number of hawkers is to reduce the social evils that drive them on to the streets to earn two meals a day. There are many social evils, but I will mention only the main ones:
1. Labour Laws: Workers have seen in recent years how they are treated during an economic recession: they are discarded like old rags. In 1974-75 they were left without means of livelihood when their factories closed down or ran short of buyers. Now that business is picking up a little, some are being offered low, daily-paid wages which they cannot accept. A few employers have approached me to ask if I will send the unemployed to them, but when I ask the conditions of work, I am told that girls of 16-25 are required, and wages are $14-20 daily, which means the sack without notice if trade declines. Better-paid jobs are seldom available, but in any case, only the very able-bodied are required. Can families subsist with daily uncertainty about tomorrow, and on the labour of their daughters? Has the Government offered them any alternative to starvation, begging, stealing—or hawking, with or without a licence? If the Government would offer any alternative, then I shall have no further argument to offer on this point.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
2. Housing Rents: Again, what is the Government offering to badly-paid workers in the way of housing? Oh yes, we have lots of housing, lots of new estates. But how does one get into them? Some have waited eight years and are still told to wait. And if they are offered housing, what about the new rents? Failure to accept housing at the new rents means further waiting, or a home in the slums. The last Secretary for Housing, when tackled on the problem of high rents, said, "The labourers can afford to pay these rents because ALL their wives are hawkers." So one Government Department drives them to illegal hawking to pay their rents, while another confiscates their goods for doing so. Need I say more on this point?
3. Underprivileged: Besides the underprivileged workers, we also have a large number of other underprivileged people whose only outlet is hawking. I refer to widows and widowers with children needing home care; I refer to handicapped people, many of them victims of industrial accidents, who are discarded when they can no longer work in industry, but who are able to rehabilitate themselves by hawking. Please note that I am not speaking of those who are too handicapped to hawk, but of those who can gain some self-respect and rehabilitate themselves, since the Government obviously has no adequate plan to rehabilitate these cast-offs of industry; I mean also old people who cannot exist on $180 a month public assistance. These old people, for whom this society has prepared no self-respecting system of support in old age, are submitted to constant and humiliating investigations every few months before they may receive even that $180 a month, which would scarcely pay for the one day's food for a highly-paid obedient public servant. All praise to these old people that they want to retain their self-respect and work as hawkers selling a few vegetables to keep themselves independent of charity.
Yet it is usually these underprivileged who are arrested and charged with hawking without a licence, and have all their goods confiscated. The authorities appear to specialize in catching these unable to run fast enough to escape, while others, young toughs who have obviously paid their dues to the triads, and through triads, to the police, can operate brazenly and block up street corners, cinema entrances, and even main roads.
Such a situation is a disgrace: it makes us a laughing stock when we talk about controlling the number of hawkers. The honest poor are taken to court, while the disreputable escape. The courts are then turned by the authorities into instruments of oppression.
Page 83 of 174
Page 83 of 174
Page 83 of 174
129
128
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
This is a clear admission that the number of hawkers in the streets has nothing to do with arrest and punishment, but with the economy of Hong Kong, the level of employment, the wage level, and the adequacy of public assistance for the unemployable/or the unemployed.
Moreover hawkers exist not only because of their own social conditions, but because of the needs of their customers.
If wages were higher, customers might buy all their goods from shops, where rents are high, and I can assure you because I shop from both, prices are much higher in shops than from hawkers. Hong Kong seems to aim at keeping wages low, rents high, and hawkers off the streets. These are three incompatible ingredients in our society. If we are to retain the evil of low wages, we must also accept the lesser and more honest evil of hawkers providing for our workers' needs.
Granted that there are more hawkers then we really need, what methods are there of reducing the number? Is it the best way to seize their goods and punish them, if necessary, by imprisonment? If that is what we really want, we had better release all the more dangerous criminals from the prisons, and let the police and the courts concentrate on sending these victims of our society to prison to suffer for our social neglect.
Surely the only way to reduce the number of hawkers is to reduce the social evils that drive them on to the streets to earn two meals a day. There are many social evils, but I will mention only the main
ones:
1. Labour Laws: Workers have seen in recent years how they are treated during an economic recession: they are discarded like old rags. In 1974-75 they were left without means of livelihood when their factories closed down or ran short of buyers. Now that business is picking up a little, some are being offered low, daily-paid wages which they cannot accept. A few employers have approached me to ask if I will send the unemployed to them, but when I ask the conditions of work, I am told that girls of 16-25 are required, and wages are $14-20 Better daily which means the sack without notice if trade declines. paid jobs are seldom available, but in any case, only the very able bodied are required. Can families subsist with daily uncertainty about tomorrow, and on the labour of their daughters? Has the Government offered them any alternative to starvation, begging, stealing-or hawk- ing, with or without a licence? If the Government would effer any alternative, then I shall have no further argument to offer on this point.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
2. Housing Rents: Again, what is the Government offering to badly- paid workers in the way of housing? Oh yes, we have lots of housing. lots of new estates. But how does one get into them? Some have waited eight years and are still told to wait. And if they are offered housing, what about the new rents? Failure to accept housing at the new rents means further waiting, or a home in the slums. The last Secretary for Housing, when tackled on the problem of high rents, said, "The labourers can afford to pay these rents because ALL their wives are hawkers." So one Government Department drives them to illegal hawking to pay their rents, while another confiscates their goods for doing so. Need I say more on this point?
3. Underprivileged: Besides the underprivileged workers, we also have a large number of other underprivileged people whose only outlet is hawking. I refer to widows and widowers with children needing home care; I refer to handicapped people, many of them victims of industrial accidents, who are discarded when they can no longer work in industry, but who are able to rehabilitate themselves by hawking. Please note that I am not speaking of those who are too handicapped to hawk, but of those who can gain some self respect and rehabilitate themselves, since the Government obviously has no adequate plan to rehabilitate these cast-offs of industry; I mean also old people who cannot exist on $180 a month public assistance. These old people for whom this society has prepared no self-respecting system of support in old age, are submitted to constant and humiliating investigations every few months before they may receive even that $180 a month, which would scarcely pay for the one day's food for a highly-paid obedient public servant. All praise to these old people that they want to retain their self respect and work as hawkers selling a few vegetables to keep themselves independent of charity.
Yet it is usually these underprivileged who are arrested and charged with hawknig without a licence, and have all their goods confiscated. The authorities appear to specialize in catching these unable to run fast enough to escape, while others, young toughs who have obviously paid their dues to the triads, and through triads, to the police, can operate brazenly and block up street corners, cinema entrances, and even main roads.
Such a situation is a disgrace: it makes us a laughing stock when we talk about controlling the number of hawkers. The honest poor are taken to court, while the disreputable escape. The courts are then turned by the authorities into instruments of oppression.
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