Angry villagers shout down development chief Paul Chan at new town meeting

The development chief last night endured a rowdy reception from villagers who would lose their homes under his bureau's plan to turn their border suburb into a new town.

Paul Chan Mo-po, secretary for development, skirted around their demands for an exact date that he would visit the villages he wants to tear down - a promise he made months ago.

It was Chan's first face-to-face meeting with villagers, held at a North District Council venue in Fanling, on the controversial northeastern New Territories dual-town plan.

"You are exaggerating," the minister said in response to a Kwu Tung villager's criticism that the Development Bureau was "killing" the families whose homes fall under the plan.

"You are indeed destroying our homes, it's no different from killing us," said student Chung Xiaoqing, a Kwu Tung villager.

"I beg you, minister, to allow my 90-year-old mother to live out the rest of her days in her village," another woman said.

In another exchange at the meeting, which was closed to the media, Chan replied that: "The [new town] project is for Hongkongers."