Mui Wo police failing to curb illegal parking and catch burglars
The Transport Department is partly to blame for the Mui Wo parking problem, because it keeps handing out South Lantau Road permits and does not check if these cars can be parked in Mui Wo.
Recent articles and letters have discussed the Mui Wo parking problem.
The Transport Department is partly to blame for this problem, because it keeps handing out South Lantau Road permits and does not check if these cars can be parked in Mui Wo.
There are four small lots and all are almost always full. Some drive their cars on the service road to park in front of their house even though they are not allowed to do so. And that brings the second problem - the complete lack of police presence.
Locally police in Mui Wo are considered to be utterly ineffective and are only seen three times a day, when they all get into a van and drive to town to have breakfast, lunch or dinner at the cooked food market.
There have been sightings of officers sticking notes at the ferry pier stating that it is illegal to use electrical bicycles. But they never go into the villages to post alongside the bike paths and to catch people zooming by on these bikes.
This really does not take a whole lot of detective work. But no, the Mui Wo police can't be dragged away from their police station and seem to be afraid of the local clans.
They do not fine people dumping rubbish, building illegal structures, using electrical bicycles, parking illegally in the villages nor do they monitor the behaviour of the bus drivers working for the New Lantao Bus Company.
On top of that, the Mui Wo area suffers from a lot of burglaries and bicycle thefts, but I am not aware that they are actually catching the culprits even though it is commonly known who could be responsible. If they confiscated some of the electrical bikes, they could use them for surveillance and no burglar would hear them coming.
When I read the suggestion to install parking meters to solve the parking problem, I had to laugh. First, it does not create parking spaces which do no exist. Second, do we really think the police will actually patrol these meters and check them?
The government needs to act. It should stop issuing South Lantau Road permits, redesign the existing inefficient parking spaces, create more spaces on unused government land and, finally, make the police do their job.
