The Hong Kong Public Market Hawkers Association, which was behind yesterday's protest by 100 vendors, is planning a series of protest actions that include a judicial review, a hunger strike, a march on July 1 and a one-week operation during which more than 1,000 tenants from six wet markets in East Kowloon will move from their indoor vending stalls to sell outdoors.

The operation outdoors will start tomorrow.

The contracts of about 10,000 local wet market tenants will expire at the end of June.

The vendors were required to renew their contracts by the end of this month but about 5,000 have not yet done so.

Union chairman David Wong Chai-wai said he saw no future under the new tenancy contract, which would only last one year, instead of the previous three-year term.

He feared that the rent, rates and air-conditioning fees would rise when the next contract came up on July 1, 2011, despite the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department guaranteeing a freeze of those fees in the new contract starting on July 1 this year.

A spokesman from the department said it was reviewing a mechanism proposed last year to determine the rental prices of stalls by market price after strong opposition, but emphasised that vendors were free to sign the new contract or renew their old ones.

Wong also criticised the new contract for not allowing their stalls to be inherited by their children, which was allowed under old contracts.

He said many market vendors were uneducated and the stalls were their only means to make a living for their families. Many of them had wanted their stall to pass to their descendents.

The department's spokesman said wet markets were social resources, and tenancy contracts should not be seen as a commodity for transferring or trading. She said the new contract was introduced to combat sub-leasing of stalls.

Many market vendors are former roadside hawkers. The current contracts offered special terms to entice them to give up their hawker licences and move to indoor stalls for a better business environment.

But Wong said many of those terms were not found in the new contract.

Wong has lodged a letter of complaint to the department, in which he lists 12 points from the new contract that the union claims are unfair, and demanded a reply within a week or the union would launch a judicial review. The department's spokesman said the new contract had only two additional terms. She said it would communicate with the vendors within two weeks.

List of grievances

The union lists 12 points in the contracts which it says are unfair

The number of vendors who took part in yesterday's protest at Ngau Chi Wan market: 100