ENG-2018 — Page 212

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Food Safety, Environmental Hygiene, Agriculture and Fisheries

Abatement of Sanitary Nuisances

The department issues nuisance notices requiring those responsible to stop sanitary nuisances such as refuse accumulation, dripping air conditioners and water seepage in private premises. In 2018, it issued 8,843 such notices and secured 77 convictions against those who failed to comply with the notices.

Pest Control

Preventing the spread of pest-borne diseases is one of the FEHD's prime tasks. It reviews constantly the methodology and strategy for controlling the spread of pests.

Campaigns are carried out across Hong Kong annually to urge people to help stop the spread of mosquitoes and rodents. The department maintains close surveillance of the Aedes albopictus, a carrier of dengue fever and potential vector of the Zika virus, and the Culex tritaeniorhynchus, a carrier of Japanese encephalitis. Anti-mosquito teams conducted 909,247 inspections of likely mosquito breeding spots and eliminated 63,635 breeding places during the year. Twenty-nine local cases of dengue fever were recorded.

The department deploys pest control teams to sustain mosquito prevention and control work. Additional resources are utilised to carry out intensive exercises across the territory before the rainy season, so as to suppress the adult mosquito population and eradicate possibly infected mosquitoes. All samples collected under a dengue vector surveillance programme in port areas and in areas with an Area Ovitrap Index of at least 10 per cent are tested for dengue fever and the Zika virus.

Cemeteries, Crematoria and Columbaria

The department manages six government crematoria, 10 public cemeteries and eight public columbaria, and monitors the management of 27 private cemeteries. To cope with the long- term public demand for facilities and services that handle the cremated ashes of the deceased, the government adopts a three-pronged strategy, namely increasing the supply of public niches, promoting green burial and regulating private columbaria.

The government promotes a district-based columbarium development scheme to increase the supply of public niches. Apart from two completed projects in Wong Tai Sin and Cheung Chau, three columbarium projects in Wan Chai, Tsang Tsui and Wo Hop Shek are scheduled for completion in 2019, providing about 208,000 niches to be allocated in phases. The government will expedite the development of public columbaria on shortlisted sites across the territory.

The government promotes green burial, encouraging environment-friendly and sustainable ways of handling ashes, such as by scattering them in gardens of remembrance or at sea. The department provides a free ferry service to scatter ashes at sea and, through its mobile application, an internet memorial service for the public to pay tribute to the deceased online.

Under the Private Columbaria Ordinance, a specified instrument, namely a licence, an exemption or a temporary suspension of liability, must be obtained to operate a private

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