kevin sinclair's hong kong
There is a widespread public perception, which I share fully, that a prime concern of the lands, buildings, planning and works agencies of government is to protect and nurture the interests of real estate developers. Too harsh? Look at their track records.
For many years planning proposals have been zealously shielded by civil servants who seem to feel their first duty is to guard their construction industry buddies (and sometimes future employers) with the ferocity of a Doberman attack dog. Recall, for instance, the 2002 plot to destroy Stanley Market. A developer, whose identity remains cosily withheld by government officials, wanted 1,990 square metres of public land in the heart of the bazaar to build shopping malls. This would have effectively wiped out Hong Kong's third-ranking tourist attraction.
When the South China Morning Post uncovered the scheme there was a near-riot by Stanley residents, shopholders and tourists. So intense was the uproar that even the Tung administration paid heed. The plan was scrapped.
There have been numerous similar incidents of unseemly overfriendly relations between those who seek to profit mightily from land deals and officials who are supposed to regulate them.
Take a look at a situation developing in Sai Kung. An unknown developer and the anonymous owner of a block of land near the village of Sha Kok Mei want to build a major complex of 21 houses on a 12,400 square metre site. For more than a year, the government has been forcing the once-beautiful stream that ran through the area into a concrete channel under a $12.8 million contract to build car parks and carry out river work. This publicly funded project has opened access to the wooded knoll where the $42.6 million site was purchased in 1997 by a firm called Honiton International.
This Hong Kong company has its registered office in the secretive tax and business asylum of the British Virgin Islands, where ownership is impossible to trace. A month ago work gangs ploughed across the government work site with earth-moving equipment, built an illegal steel bridge over the stream and began to devastate the knoll. Civil servants, supposedly responsible, didn't have a clue what was happening until South China Morning Post reporters started asking questions.
What's new? When specific questions were asked, answers were evasive or downright false. Officials refused to make a site visit until reporters said they were going there with angry indigenous villagers. For two weeks, official spokesmen for the hapless departments denied vehemently that anyone had sought permission to build on the site.
Finally they admitted it after journalists made exhaustive checks of lands and company registries and presented them with documented proof.
When officials finally came clean, some disquieting facts emerged. Despite all protestations, it was revealed that Town Planning Board approval had been given for the project six years ago and had been twice renewed. Part of this approval demanded a satisfactory master landscape plan and tree-preservation proposal.
Asked this week to explain how the devastation of the entire site complied with this provision, a spokesman for the Land Department denied there were any restrictions on tree felling, said there were no preservation restrictions and claimed it could take no action.
This indicates that planning requirements are what the developer feels like implementing and conditions laid down by the government can be ignored, totally. People who have watched contractors devastate sites have long suspected this but it is rare for the government to admit it. So who is the developer, contractor and owner?
The public does not know and the public will not be told. Until the middle of last year, such details were deliberately kept from the public. Town planning regulations were changed last June and now the names of applicants for developments have to be included. But all past proposals remain secret.
The Town Planning Board insists it cannot name the site applicant or his agent unless they give specific permission. The board asked the applicant's agent if their identities could be disclosed to the South China Morning Post. The agent refused.
So just who has committed these environmental crimes and ruptured planning agreements and blatantly trespassed over government land and dumped concrete into streams and built illegal bridges is going to stay a secret. Open government? This is the reality of government transparency in action.
