25 years ago GOVERNMENT is offering private medical practitioners three-year contracts, plus a 17 per cent gratuity of the gross salary earned at the end of the period. The scheme, which was first disclosed by Dr P.H. Teng, Director of Medical and Health Services, in his Budget speech last week, was designed to attract those who did not intend making a career in the service but who were prepared to stay for a few years, a Medical and Health Department spokesman said this week.
A SHOCKING murder-and-robbery case occurred in the busy district of Wan Chai this week when two elderly women were found bound and gagged with wads of cloth in their flat. The victims were a 60-year-old housewife and a 58-year-old amah. The robber or robbers were believed to have gained entry on some pretext or the other to the flat on Johnston Road, then caused the women to be suffocated to death before they disappeared with $500 and a bank savings book.
CHINESE trade officials will be keeping a close watch on art objects at the forthcoming Canton Fair to prevent Japanese, French and other visitors from making a fortune out of them, local art dealers said this week. In the autumn fair last year, some local merchants as well as French and Japanese traders, made considerable fortunes from these art objects of extremely high value, as Chinese trade officials, who were either inexperienced or influenced by Mao's slogan to ''eliminate the old,'' sold them at ''giveaway'' prices.
THE Advisory Committee on Public Transport has recommended that 250 taxi licences should be issued in order to meet present demands and provide Hongkong with legal rather than illegal taxi services. The Chairman of the Transport Advisory Committee would be making a statement within a day or two, it was officially announced.
45 years ago THE ''key money'' racket which hitherto has been conducted in Hongkong surreptitiously, has now blossomed out into open defiance of the law. A journalist this week discovered four agencies in Kowloon brazenly advertising their willingness to obtain living accommodations on payment of commission from ''key money''. Ironically, one of these establishments was set up in the street at the rear of the Mongkok police station, and another one located little more than a stone's throw from the same station.
PILED high on the Chatham Road sidings of the Kowloon-Canton Railway are huge crates containing the first Japanese reparations for Hongkong. Originally consigned to the United Kingdom, they have been redressed to the Supplies, Trade and Industry Department. The Colony has so far received 160 cases, containing machinery and machine parts. The consignment was brought to Hongkong by the Loksang.
