Minister gets cool welcome from doomed village
The development chief got a hostile and emotional reception when he toured the proposed site for a new town in the northeastern New Territories. About 30 villagers could not hide their tears, knowing they would have to leave their homes to make way for the development.
The development chief got a hostile and emotional reception when he toured the proposed site for a new town in the northeastern New Territories yesterday.
About 30 villagers could not hide their tears, knowing they would have to leave their homes to make way for the development.
Visiting some of the affected areas, Secretary for Development Paul Chan Mo-po said "our hands are tied to a certain extent" when it came to meeting residents' demands to let them stay.
"The area we visited this morning would be around the future railway station," he said. This meant it would become a high-density development for residential, commercial and social facilities.
Chan visited Kwu Tung Main Road, Shek Tsai Leng, Ho Sheung Heung and the Fung Kong area, where Kwu Tung village has about 1,000 households.
Auntie Ko, 59, who has lived in the village for 35 years, said she was not interested in any compensation or resettlement deal, as she wanted to keep the home built by her husband, who died three years ago.
"We were poor when we got married," she recalled. "It took us a lot of effort to save HK$110,000 to buy our home, where we brought up our four kids. I have a lot of memories here."
Ko accused Chan of "not wholeheartedly listening to the villagers but staging a public relations show".
Chan told them: "It is practically impossible to keep the villages. I hope villagers can think positively about a satisfying resettlement and compensation plan - and I will be happy to listen."
There were angry accusations directed at Chan when the tour took him past a plot of farmland formerly owned by his family and that is now covered by the new town project. Landlords in the area look set to collect billions of dollars in compensation.
Another affected area near Shek Tsai Leng is the site of 16 homes for the elderly, accommodating 1,100 people with an average age of 85.
Wong Chung-ching, chairman of the Shek Tsai Leng Elderly Services Association, said that if moving was inevitable, the residents hoped they could be resettled altogether in the new town rather than in different districts.
"We have formed a close-knit community where everyone looks after each other, and the elderly are carefully looked after by more than 400 staff they are familiar with," Wong said.
The HK$120 billion new town project has undergone several revisions to increase housing density. In the latest changes in July, the number of flats proposed for Kwu Tung and Fanling North increased 28 per cent to 60,700 on 333 hectares.
The proportion of public flats rose to 60 per cent.
