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SCMP Reporter

PLAYGROUNDS, parks and football pitches have become danger zones for housing estate residents who say bloodstained syringes are being hurled from high flats.

  Today, the people of Kwai Fong estate in Kwai Tsing District plan to march to Government House clutching handfuls of syringes to press administrators to control their sale.

  They say fear has swept the estate since needles, believed to have been discarded by drug addicts, narrowly missed two people this month.

  People now prefer to walk under shelters and canopies, cover their baby strollers and scurry across open spaces.

  Kwai Tsing District Board member Ting Yin-wah said he received about 30 complaints a month regarding syringes.

  'They mainly complain that used syringes are found on their balconies, on canopies and in the corners of staircases and refuse stores. It was not until recently that they complained they were threatened by falling needles,' Mr Ting said.

  Van driver Yip Wah-kei, 35, said he parked his car and was walking to his home in Kwai Kin House on the estate when a needle plummeted to the ground only centimetres in front of his face.

  'I didn't realise what it was at first,' Mr Yip said. 'When I knelt down, I was shocked by the bloodstain at the tip of the needle.'   He said the incident occurred close to a busy flyover, used as a shortcut across Kwai Chung Road by people heading for nearby factory buildings and bus stops for Tuen Mun.

  'It's also close to a school,' he added.

  Housewife Mrs Law, who was afraid to reveal her full name, told how a used falling needle had almost scraped her hand as she leaned from her window.

  'I was hanging some clothes outside the window to dry when a needle dropped on my freshly-washed jacket. It was so sudden and close to my hand that I nearly dropped the jacket,' she said.

  Mrs Law, who also lives in Kwai Kin House, said residents often found syringes on their canopies or balconies.

  Below Mrs Law's balcony is a playground where small children play all day.

  Now Kwai Tsing families say their problems with local drug addicts have taken a more sinister turn in the days preceding Lunar New Year.

  'They knock on people's doors saying 'Kung Hei Fatt Choy ' and then ask for money,' District Board member Leung Kwong-cheong said.

    District Board members and residents at today's rally are to call for syringe sales to be restricted to patients with doctors' prescriptions and for pharmacies' sales records to be monitored.

  But Health Department spokesman Winnie Wong Lin-fong said there were no plans to alter the present policy: 'Free availability of sterilised syringes is vital for the maintenance of public health and disease prevention.' 



Estate residents threatened by falling syringes