1988 — Page 121

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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

outcry from the man and woman in the street demanding their District Board members or other representatives to pressure Government into tackling the environmental problems with more vigour irrespective of the industrial and financial casualties that might be caused along the way. Hong Kong cannot now have its industrial cake, and eat it. The choice is ours to make, not the administrators.

I sometimes wish people would pay as much attention to the environment, as they do to politics. After all, with political will, systems can be changed, but the environment, once destroyed, may not recover.

The Urban Council is all set for further expansion to its membership with the addition of 10 urban District Board members on 1 April. Ever since the introduction of the District Administration Scheme in 1982, this Council has made every effort to promote a good relationship with District Boards. As a re- sult of Councillor's membership on District Boards and their efforts to make our policies understood, the Council and the Boards on the whole do enjoy a good relationship. Alas, to many of my colleagues regret, this arrangement ceases at the end of March. For on the 1st April, a new chapter in municipal government opens and the Council will welcome the 10 additional DB members who will then be able to take part in our decision-making process. It is hoped they will soon come to appreciate the Council's urban-wide responsibility which constrains it from meeting every local demand and requirement.

We are looking forward to working with our new colleagues, and are sure that with their vitality and novel ideas, as well as their deep sense of civic responsibility, we shall be able to proceed on the basis of consensus and en- hance the Urban Council's proud record of more than a century's dedicated work for the betterment of the entire community.

This has been a satisfactory year with progress made on all fronts. The Council has worked within its budget and managed to show a modest surplus. But coming events do cast a long shadow of financial commitments growing longer. However, the Council has shown its ability to deal with new problems and responsibility, and is ever ready to take more on board, whether these be environmental, cultural or recreational. All we will require is simply a large proportion of the urban rate. How much more, well, that depends on cir- cumstances at the time.

In conclusion, on behalf of my colleagues, I must pay tribute to the Secretary of the Urban Council and his staff for having so efficiently coped with the vol- ume of work produced by our varied and expanding activities. Credit must also be given to the Director of Urban Services and his senior colleagues, as well as the 17 000 odd members of the Urban Services Department, for the efforts they have expended in keeping our complicated urban structure so clean, green and operating effectively.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish the people of Hong Kong a happier, healthier and indeed a more prosperous new year.

I so move.

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MRS. ELSIE TU, VICE CHAIRMAN, URBAN COUNCIL (in English):—Mr. Chair-

man, I rise to second the Motion.

I should like to begin by thanking you, Mr. Chairman, for sharing with me the joys and sorrows of your chairmanship during the past three years. I should also like to thank my colleagues, as well as all the Departmental and Secretariat staff, for their support, advice and encouragement.

As my name has long been associated with hawkers, I should now like to say something about markets and street traders. Sometimes I feel that we have made good headway, when I see efforts being made departmentally to im- plement the new policies to provide better and more attractive markets. This has often meant revamping the original plans and spending more time and money on construction or alterations to make them more viable. I believe that the demon of the old thinking that markets are some kind of prison to incar- cerate stray hawkers has been exorcised, and that we may now view markets as an essential service to the population, and hawkers as an asset to the economy, provided they can exercise self-restraint, and not obstruct traffic and pedestrians.

But we still have a long way to go before we can demonstrate to the public the effectiveness of our new thinking on markets and hawkers. We still have to convince the Government, too, that the issue cannot be resolved unless land is allocated for the purpose. We still have to train and adequately pay our hawker control staff, and we still need to implement the decision to approach marketing as a well-organized business instead of a free-for-all; we need to train market managers to deal with stall holders with a hawker background who refuse to restrict themselves to an orderly manner of operation.

These outstanding issues from our White Paper on Hawker and Market Policies are all being studied, but the end is by no means in sight. I have serious doubts as to whether the Government has ever considered the issue of hawkers and markets as seriously as it considers other services to the public. Recently the Government requested us to remove some hawkers of over twenty years' standing (all licensed), in order to improve transport, I have nothing against resiting hawkers to improve transport and roads, but when the Govern- ment offers resites which are an insult to both hawkers and their customers, being little better than rubbish dumps, I cannot believe that it is serious about the part that hawkers and markets play, in our daily lives and in the economy.

I can only hope that 1989 will see some more progressive and intelligent government thinking on the need for the public to buy their daily provisions from markets and bazaars near to their homes, so that they do not have to resort to buying goods from unlicensed hawkers. After all the failures of the past, surely it is time for this lesson to sink in.