Government Union on Defence in Enforcing Hawker Rules

Kong (right) looks over Chan's paperwork

A government union has come out in defence of confiscating a 90-year-old's hawker cart and arresting a 29-year-old man who was helping her.

Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department Staff Rights Union vice chairwoman Li Mei-siu said itinerant hawkers like Chan Tak-ching could not hire assistants to tend to their stalls. Only fixed-pitch ones can have hired helpers. 

Chan had gone to the washroom and when she came back she found the man arrested and her cart seized by FEHD. She pleaded to the officers to give her a fine instead, but they ignored her.

Chan was distraught when her cart was seized

"If she was there, she might only be prosecuted for obstruction of streets because she has a license. But another individual man with no license was doing business, that's why he was prosecuted for unlicensed hawking," she told a radio program.

"When it comes to unlicensed hawking, we always seize the tools as evidence."

Ah, playing by the book.

However she added that FEHD officers will have a "relaxed stance" towards hawkers when enforcing the rules, saying the public might have "misunderstood how we would handle a situation like this."

"Sometimes even if itinerant hawkers hire assistants to help with their business, as long as the licensees are present to man the stall, we would not prosecute them," she said.

"Some residents do not know that itinerant hawkers are not allowed to hire assistants, so they blame the department for not being humane and tend to bully elderly people."

First off, the rule is unreasonable. How can someone go take a toilet break and have no one manning their stall, or if they are, not be able to serve customers because they don't have a license?

Kong says regulations need to be updated

That's the same question lawmaker Doreen Kong Yuk-foon asked, who is supporting Chan. Kong questioned whether the current regulations were outdated and needed to be updated.

"A fixed-pitch hawker can hire assistants to help with managing the stall but an itinerant hawker cannot? I don't really get the logic behind this," she told the same radio program.

"I hope the authorities are more considerate when handling similar incidents to avoid conflicts. Honestly, how many years have they been doing this? Hawkers need to work with dignity and the government should give them room to make a living," she said.

Kong said Chan is still very upset about her cart being confiscated and is worried the chestnuts and quail eggs will go missing or go rotten.

"I just don't understand why they seized the whole cart. I doubt the officers needed to move the cart to the courtroom for prosecution and I don't believe the judge needs to physically see the cart to make a verdict."

Has there never been a previous case where an itinerant hawker was away from their stand and an assistant was caught for handling a transaction in the decades since hawker licenses have been issued? 

Perhaps this is the new "Happy Hong Kong" where the law is enforced to a T because the city's leader was a top cop...