Hell in a Handcart

Take a stroll from Queen’s Street in Sheung Wan to Sai Ying Pun’s Centre Street, and you will come across row upon row of shops selling dried abalone, scallops and salted fish. Nicknamed “Dried Seafood Street," this area is famous for its diverse range of marine products and draws shoppers and tourists alike. But walking down this road is more like tackling an obstacle course thanks to the many metal trolleys chained up along the old, narrow streets. With so many goods being loaded and unloaded each day, the delivery workers leave their handcarts tied to the railings for convenience.

The practice has become a nuisance for pedestrians. With the paths less than three meters wide and much of the space taken up by merchandise spilling onto the sidewalk, it can be very challenging to negotiate, especially for the many older people living in the area. Ms. Chan visits her father, who lives in the area, three times a week. “The trolleys that are parked along the road block our way and they occupy public space, but there is no way for me to complain about it,” she says. “It is also difficult for the elderly to walk down this street when there are so many trolleys parked here.”

But not only do the trolleys obstruct the sidewalks, they also potentially pose a danger to pedestrians, especially young children. Many of them are rusting, have sharp corners, or are even precariously stacked on top of each other for storage. John Bernard Davila Julve moved to the Des Voeux Road West area five years ago. His son is four years old and goes to a kindergarten in the neighborhood. He takes his son to the school every day but he always avoids the Dried Seafood Street in the mornings—going so far as to take a longer route to school. “Sure, there have been no accidents so far, but it could happen,” he says.

This isn’t just a problem peculiar to Sheung Wan. In many other parts of the city, such as Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui, you can find handcarts parked on the sidewalk or chained to public railings. Despite this, prosecutions remain rare. According to the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD), only 18 prosecutions were made between January 2008 and March 2010. That’s less than eight prosecutions per year.

The problem is, FEHD inspectors are not actually licensed to do anything about unattended trolleys. “We do not have a suitable law to handle such complaints,” says Li Mei-siu, vice-president of the FEHD Staff Rights Union. As the law currently stands, FEHD staff are only authorized to prosecute people who leave things on roads, according to Section 22 of the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance. The law states that any person who obstructs government cleaning operations is guilty of an offence. This means that officers can only take action if the handcarts are directly obstructing FEHD staff from cleaning the road. “If we take it to the court then it is highly likely that our department will lose the case,” says Li. “We recently tried to prosecute a handcart owner in Sai Wan, but the judge said there was no way she was obstructing cleaning because she could move her trolley.”

Many feel the prosecution process is inefficient and there are also many ways for handcart owners to avoid being pursued by the FEHD. Before any action can be taken, officers need to post a notice asking the owners to move the trolleys within four hours. This gives ample time for owners to move them to another spot. Another way to get around the law is for cart owners to chain their trolleys so that they’re suspended off the ground. That way, the FEHD are unable to prosecute.