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Following is a transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a media stand-up session after attending the meeting of the Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene of the Legislative Council today (December 13):
Reporter: (About consultation on licensing scheme for private columbaria.)
Secretary for Food and Health: Private columbaria in Hong Kong have been in existence for many years and certainly the new legislation to be introduced is not easy to enact. We have to take into account two different types of private columbaria. One type is those columbaria come in after the law is passed. But we have to deal with a lot of columbaria belonging to the second type that have been in existence for different period of time. What we would like to consult the public is how we should set certain conditions to regulate them. What we have decided is some of the columbaria belonging to, for example the religious bodies and so on, should be exempted because they have been in existence for many years. And those that are in compliance with the planning and land lease conditions, as well as the building legislation, should also be considered. But if they are in existence for only a very short time, and yet they do not comply with any of the requirements, we will ask them to consider whether they need to apply for regularisation through the respective authorities. This will take some time. We will be able to suspend their liability for a short period of time so that they can comply with the relevant requirements. There will be certainly some of the columbaria that would not comply with anything even they are given time. I think they would need to stop their operation.
Reporter: Will you consider the new mechanism on cancellation of hawker licence too harsh?
Secretary for Food and Health: Not really. The mechanism is already in existence for the market stalls. We are just introducing it to the street stalls at the same time. What we have set in the criteria perhaps would be even more lenient when comparing with the market stalls.
Reporter: (About further regulation on street stalls.)
Secretary for Food and Health: I do not think we need to introduce any more tough measures comparing with what we have already presented today. The next step is to help the stall owners to organise themselves and suggest some safer construction for their stalls.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Issued at HKT 20:15
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