1995 — Page 354

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Page 354 of 485

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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

pattern for the Hawker Control Teams should be considered again. On 21 June, 1995, the Urban Council endorsed the creation of 7 additional Regional Task Force Squads. At present, most of the early-morning and late-night hawker control operations are conducted by the Regional Task Force squads. There are a total of 15 such squads in the entire territory, 6 in Hong Kong Region and 9 squads in Kowloon Region. Let us take a look at the period between May and July 1995, only 44 early-morning operations and 81 night operations were carried out by the Regional Task Force. Bearing in mind that the Urban Council has 11 districts under its jurisdiction, there were on average only 2 early-morning operations and 4 night operations in each district per month. With such a small number of hawker control operations conducted, how are we able to deal with the problems of unlicensed hawkers and unlicensed food premises? According to the data provided by the Urban Services Department, the problem of late-night illegal food business and illegal hawking exists in almost every district. In order to achieve effective control, we must change the existing working hours of the Hawker Control Teams and Health Inspectors. I suggest that:

1.

2. A 3-shift work pattern should be adopted by the Hawker Control Teams; For areas which have active hawking activities in early morning, the duty hours of Hawker Control staff should start earlier at 6.00 a.m. to 6.30 a.m.; moreover, Health Inspectors should also work on shifts to raid the unlicensed food premises within their districts.

There is a serious problem in the control of unlicensed hawkers. During the course of their hawker control duties, staff of the Urban Services Department will not enter any areas under the management of the Housing Department to take enforcement actions. Instead, they will rely on the staff of the Housing Department to deal with the unlicensed hawkers. As a result, public housing estates often become unlicensed hawkers' refuge. At present, the Housing Department has only about 200 staff members to handle hawker and market-related problems inside public housing estates and Home Ownership Scheme estates in the entire territory. For housing estates where illegal hawking and illegal food business operations are active, such a limited number of staff can hardly solve the problem at all.

Finally, I know that the Working Group on the Control of Illegal Hawking will further discuss the proposal of changing the Hawker Control Force to a disciplinary force. A number of colleagues also put forward the proposal of 'municipal police' which is a good proposal and worth further consideration by the Council. We think it is also important to acquire additional resources, vehicles and radio equipment and to consider the introduction of fixed penalty system to complement our hawker control measures. I know that the Working Group is now awaiting the Department's reply to its recommendations before presenting them to this Council for discussion. I hope that the Department will prepare, as soon as possible, the documents responding to our recommendations. The Urban Council is spending $680 million on the control of markets and street traders each year. Do we prefer to spend a little more to do a better job and follow up this problem, or would we rather have this $680 million wasted?

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