Advertisement
Advertisement

Village chief backs change - 'but we want cash'

May Chan

Michael Suen Ming-yeung might reasonably have expected a torrent of abuse from villagers after suggesting the small-house policy should end. Instead, some village leaders gave him their backing yesterday.

One of them said a policy change was reasonable and that villagers might benefit from an end to the system, provided they were properly compensated.

Yuen Tun Village head Chung Wa-kwai said the drawbacks of building a village home sometimes outweighed the advantages.

'It's different now from how it was 20 years ago,' he said. The government now charged a premium of about $800,000 for a 700 sq ft piece of land to prevent villagers applying just to make a profit.

This, together with the administrative fee and cost of building, meant a villager had to find $1.6 million to build a home, he said.

Mr Chung said: 'Some people are too greedy to realise that simple truth. Some of them are so obsessive that they have continued to fight for land rights for nearly 30 years, all the way knowing that it is neither affordable nor profitable.

'It's a farce and I hope the government can educate the villagers on the pros and cons of building village houses.'

Another village head, Kwu Hon-keung, said he agreed with the abolition of the policy as long as compensation was given to eligible male villagers.

'Most of the die-hard land rights fighters are from the older generations, who treasure the close ties between families in the same village and wish to preserve it by allowing their off-spring to establish families there,' he said.

'Young people are not that obsessive about community spirit or [family ties] and scrapping the small-house policy makes no difference to them as long as they get compensation, such as public housing or cash grants.'

But both village heads said the government should change the policy gradually to avoid disruption among the 240,000 villagers who are eligible.

Mr Chung said the government should grant land rights to those who had applied.

Post