Editorial | Time to get policy on Hong Kong’s subdivided flats right
- Public is having to wait for results of study into tackling Hong Kong housing crisis to allow ‘new elements’ to be considered
The deep-seated housing woes of Hong Kong were never expected to be resolved overnight.
But when the government finally committed itself to tackling the subdivided flats conundrum with a 10-month study last year, the public looked forward to a comprehensive and sound strategy that could truly resolve the long-standing problem once and for all and help lift tens of thousands of residents out of shameful living conditions.
It was therefore intriguing when Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu instructed a government task force to submit “further study findings” in a month’s time after receiving its report on the way forward last week.
“After listening to the presentation and reviewing the report, the chief executive has provided to the task force relevant views received from the consultation for the policy address and requested that the task force incorporate them into the study, as well as put forward new elements for the task force’s consideration,” a government statement said.
The statement did not further elaborate on what else must be included. But it needs to be asked why these “relevant views” and “new elements”, presumably pivotal to the final policy deliberations, had not been forwarded to the task force for consideration earlier.
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After all, the group, which convened more than 20 stakeholder engagement sessions to gather views from political parties, professional bodies, academics, non-governmental organisations and concern groups and received more than 40 written submissions, had supposedly covered all the ground before mapping out its recommendations.