Leung Chun-ying pushes ahead with plan for public flats in country parks
Meanwhile, the target of 75,000 new public flats was not ‘pragmatic’, housing minister admits
Hong Kong’s outgoing leader revealed on Tuesday that he was moving ahead with controversial plans to develop protected country park land for housing and had already instructed government departments concerned to carry out a preliminary study.
The revelation came as the city’s housing minister admitted that the administration’s target of building 75,000 public housing flats within its five-year term could not be met because it was “not quite pragmatic”.
Heading into his weekly cabinet meeting, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said he had decided to commission a feasibility study to “identify possible sites for non-profit-making use at the periphery of country parks with lower ecological value” in response to public calls for more details after he floated the idea in his final policy address last week.
“With this preliminary study, we will present as soon as possible the possible sites,” Leung said.
He has proposed that in exchange for building public flats and non-profit homes for the elderly on protected sites, the government will designate more areas of high conservation value in country parks.
At a Legislative Council meeting on Tuesday, acting development minister Eric Ma Siu-cheung said although the government had not started any work on the proposal, it would “actively follow up” on it.