Let me pose a serious question. Picture some imaginative entrepreneur opening a crematorium in the Caine Road area to burn the bodies of dead pets. The prevailing wind would waft the charred remnants of Fido and Kitty over millionaires' homes in the Mid-Levels.
Suppose that burning flakes of a dead mongrel - 'the size of a five dollar coin' - were blown onto the balconies of the golden ghetto where the wealthy lead their pampered lives. Imagine further if similar emporiums of incineration were operated in Repulse Bay, Jardine's Lookout and other areas inhabited by the rich, the mighty, the powerful and the influential. How long do you think the smouldering ashes and fumes of dead animals would continue to bother the people who live there?
Let me answer my own question; the place would be closed down 5.6 seconds after the first residents angrily realised they were being forced to breath the remains of pooches and pussies.
As it happens, one oven in which the pets are burned is in Tai Kok Tsui. Foul odours, ashes and charred pieces of corpses float around residents, mostly working people without immediate access to the ears of the powerful. Six government departments contacted by the press swiftly passed the buck; nobody, it seemed, had responsibility to do anything to stop this ecological atrocity. Civil servants took no effective action.
This is a disgraceful episode and a classic example of how not to govern. It is obvious to anyone who does not have their snout rammed deep into the iron rice bowl of the public service that people should not have to endure living under a daily shower of the burning remains of dead animals.
Here was an opportunity for government to show some concern for the common folk, instead of eternally displaying its worry over feather-bedding the profits of land development barons. But what has anyone in power done? Nothing effectual. This is a scandalous instance of slack and uncaring officials allowing the public to suffer while bureaucratic bottoms stay fixed firmly to their comfortable office chairs.
It's ironic that the incinerator that belches foul fumes and worrying ashes over innocent people came to light at the same time as tardy and obviously incompetent officials finally took action over the Sha Tin site where Heung Yee Kuk chieftain Daniel Heung Cheuk-kei had for 20 years violated land policy. What a perfect illustration of how the powerful are protected and the common man ignored. And where are the usually vocal politicians who scream and whine about civil liberties?
