The plight of elderly people in isolated villages in the New Territories ('Solitary Zone,' Features, South China Morning Post, May 4) is sad, but I disagree with the solution suggested in the article.
The feature repeated the Heung Yee Kuk's line that villagers suffer because 'the Government refuses to build roads'. The reasonable response that a road serving one person would not be cost effective was given short shrift.
These villages emptied because subsistence agriculture is not viable in Hong Kong, not simply because of lack of transport. Building roads would not 'revitalise the rural communities', as the Kuk said, but bring bulldozers and cement trucks. One village mentioned, Tai Long Wan, was recently rescued from developers clearing land in defiance of planning rules. Few landowners want to live in the villages. Most simply want to auction them off (or already have), and improved access gives them a higher value. These villages were excluded from country parks for them to continue traditional rural life, not to allow luxury housing or country clubs to be built in the guise of village homes.
I was struck by the contrast with my home on Lamma Island, where Luk Chau Tsuen has a resident population of three or four villagers, and perhaps a dozen others renting. However, because the District Office accepts the claim by the village representative that 180 villagers live there, millions is spent each year on roads and piers and other infrastructure designed for people who might visit once or twice a year from their flats in Hong Kong or Vancouver.
The Kuk is rich from real estate and converting rural to industrial land. But isn't its purpose the welfare of villagers? It can afford to help isolated villagers directly, now, rather than parading their suffering as stalking-horses to allow more unplanned development of land inside country parks.
ALAN SARGENT
