Wild dogs, snakes and threats – all in a day’s work for Hong Kong officials tackling land use violations
Authorities have for years struggled to deal with overwhelming number of cases related to lease violations and illegal occupation of vacant public land
Poisonous snakes, verbal threats and packs of wild dogs – these are just some of the obstacles that frontline government officials have had to deal with when tackling cases of illegal occupation of public land and land lease violations in Hong Kong.
To step up enforcement, the Lands Department said it would set up a special duties task force, similar to the police’s crime squad, this year with additional manpower of 60 officials to target more serious violations.
The department highlighted one typical case of 17 illegal structures built on a plot of 9,800 square metres of private agricultural land in Kai Leng village in Fanling, which ran for seven years.
“Often it gets difficult when it involves large plots of land in rural, hidden areas, checking old records to see if they violate the leases and trying to track down different landlords,” Joe Lo Hok-wing, a senior land executive in the North District Lands Office, said.
In some cases, permitted structures such as those for storing farming equipment would be expanded and converted into subdivided flats, but in others, luxury villas and converted container homes were built – all of which are illegal on private agricultural land.