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Opinion | To solve Hong Kong’s abandoned vehicle problem, incentives are better than enforcement
- Calls for better law enforcement to prevent vehicle dumping have gone unanswered before; perhaps a new approach is needed
- New owners could be asked to pay a deposit to the government, which would be returned once the vehicle was legally scrapped
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The French have a word for it, but then they usually do. Déjà vu – which literally means “already seen”– is the overpowering sensation that you have experienced a situation before.
Thus it was for me when the Ombudsman, Winnie Chiu Wai-yin, published her report earlier this month on the subject of vehicles abandoned on government land. Way back in 1980, I was dealing with that very same problem on Lantau in my first posting in the government.
On reading the report, another French expression sprang to mind: plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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As Chiu points out, the problem of unwanted vehicles being left in parking spaces, on roads or footpaths is a long-standing one. The practice denies law-abiding citizens the use of those facilities, for which they have paid with their tax dollars. Like other forms of dumping, there can also be hygiene issues.
It is hard to quarrel with that analysis; I could have written the same thing myself. Looking back, I probably did.
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The report does not seek to cover the problem of vehicles dumped on private land, but this is a related issue which adds a further layer of complexity as far as government departments are concerned. When a report comes in of an abandoned vehicle, it first needs to be established whether it is on government or private land (it is not always obvious).
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