Should the drug-rehab school get the Mui Wo premises?
We are Mui Wo residents who wish to dissociate ourselves from the shrill, paranoid rhetoric over the relocation of the drug-rehabilitation school.
The centre's opponents say the facility will hurt tourism. Which tourists are they talking about? As everyone knows, Mui Wo is the preferred destination for the lowest bottom-feeder budget tourism: that is, swarms of Hong Kong teenagers who crowd into cheap holiday flats, have noisy parties all night and toss used barbecue forks into the nearest streams. Some of them take drugs, as anyone taking a morning stroll in Silvermine Beach can attest to, given the number of syringes left there.
If local leaders truly wish to keep drugs out of Mui Wo, the best solution is to close the filthy holiday homes, rather than start such a school. In the unlikely event they ever develop the foresight to promote a higher class of tourism, a school for reformed addicts tucked in a back corner is the last thing that would repel visitors. More likely such visitors would be appalled by the mountains of rubbish and construction detritus that blight most of the villages, by the cars driving illegally and dangerously on footpaths, and the trucks, many owned by our leaders, parked along a potentially picturesque waterfront.
Many at the public forum were in hysterics over the drug-rehabilitation centre being a bad influence on their children. What about the Jockey Club centre, where men sit around blocking the pavements, chain-smoking and gambling away their wages and family savings? Where is the talk of the gambling centre harming tourism and children?
As for the new-found enthusiasm to re-establish a regular school on the site, remember that the previous school was unfortunately shut down because no one supported it. Non-Chinese parents send their children to international schools, and Chinese parents mostly sent their kids to 'better' schools in the city. There is nothing to suggest this situation would suddenly reverse itself with a new public school. Mui Wo leaders should clean up their act and environment before hypocritically and histrionically shouting about a facility that actually does some good for the city's entire community.
