HKBU teachers, students protest land decision
Hundreds of Baptist university students demonstrated at government offices on Friday, after a planning board approved a plan to turn half an adjacent site into residential flats.
Students and teachers from Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) are stepping their fight for a site adjacent to its main campus, after a planning board approved a proposal to turn half of it into residential flats.
Raising placards and shouting slogans, hundreds of them demonstrated at North Point Government Offices, where members of the Town Planning Board approved the proposal.
The proposal, raised by the Planning Department, suggested giving half of the site on Renfrew Road in Kowloon Tong – a district of high-end residential flats – to the HKBU, and reserving the other half for private residential flats.
The protesting students said the university needed the whole of the site as their campus could not accommodate their hostel needs, especially after the introduction of the so-called “3+4+4” academic reform.
“We will not back off, under any circumstances,” said Baptist University’s student union leader Ahson Wong Hok-kan.
The row came at a time when the government is desperate to find more land for flats to curb rising property prices and a shortage of housing.