A support group for Aids victims that has finally found a permanent base in Wan Chai fears it could be the target of prejudice when it moves in this week.
Teen Aids' new home is in a mixed commercial-residential building - a first for a non-governmental organisation involved in Aids work. It fears a repeat of the angry protests residents made against a Health Department Aids clinic in Richland Gardens, Kowloon Bay, that opened in June 1999.
The group's chief executive, Atty Ching, said she did not know how the tenants in the building, in Johnston Road, would react to their new neighbours.
She said that she would delay putting up a sign at the new office so as not to attract undue attention, on the advice of her landlady.
'It is a nightmare, because to the left of our new office is a trading company and to the right is a residential flat. Nobody knows yet that we are moving. It might be another Kowloon Bay,' Ms Ching said.
Richland Gardens residents protested against what they called an 'Aids hospital'. The Equal Opportunities Commission is now preparing to sue up to four protesters for discrimination after they abused clinic staff.
Teen Aids also faces another hurdle as the $10,000 rent on its new premises is beyond its means, Ms Ching said. She said the group's recurrent expenditure of up to $200,000 a year was not being backed by the Government.
