Widowed shoeshiner in Hong Kong allowed to get back to work
The recent immigrant from mainland China lost her licence to help her husband shine shoes after he died
A shoe shiner who was unemployed for 18 months after the death of her husband – who held their licence to work – has been given the green light to get back to work by an appeals board.
Zheng Dingzhen said she was “very happy and thankful” that the Licensing Appeals Board had upheld her appeal.
The recent mainland immigrant, 47, helped her husband, a licensed bootblack, shine shoes on Theatre Lane, Central, until he died last year.
She held a licence to help him, but after his death, that was revoked and the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department rejected attempts to take over her husband’s licence. Those rejections were overturned yesterday.
Under current policy, the eight bootblack hawker licences issued in 2009 can not be passed on.