Omicron: residents raise stink as rubbish piles up at Hong Kong estate hit by escalating Covid-19 outbreak

Mounting piles of garbage bags in lift lobbies were among complaints of residents locked down for five days at a coronavirus-stricken Hong Kong public housing estate, with some raising concerns about hygiene and saying the issue also exposed weak links in district governance.

Social media and messaging groups were flooded on Sunday with residents’ complaints about arrangements at the Omicron-hit Kwai Chung Estate, ranging from trash problems and unresponsive government hotlines to confusion about coronavirus testing locations.

Five-day lockdowns have been imposed on two blocks, Yat Kwai House and Ying Kwai House, with residents to undergo daily testing. Four buildings were closed off overnight on Saturday evening while the other 10 were given mandatory testing orders.

Some residents told the Post they were frustrated by a lack of channels to convey their immediate needs to the authorities as their two elected district council members from the opposition bloc were either behind bars or had resigned. On top of that, core voluntary members of the estate’s mutual aid committees had become inactive ahead of a government-ordered disbandment in six months.

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“It’s gross and starting to smell bad,” said a retired 51-year-old female resident named Chang, who showed photos of dozens of garbage bags piling up in the lift lobby of Yat Kwai House.

“Hotlines provided by the government and lawmakers have failed me. I just don’t know what else I can do.”

The estate’s 40 cleaners were sent to the government’s quarantine camp in Penny’s Bay on Saturday as health officials suspected they were a source of transmission for the coronavirus.

On the estate, long queues formed at testing stations on Sunday, prompting some to set up Telegram and Facebook chat groups to organise screening in batches among themselves.

“To avoid the crowd, let’s suggest a time for each floor to go down to get tested. I can print it out and stick it in the lift lobby … Self-help is the only way out,” Ying Kwai House resident Rita Law posted in a Telegram chat group joined by more than 1,000.

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Lawmaker Ben Chan Han-pan of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, the city’s largest pro-government party, said more than 1,000 inquiries about lockdown arrangements had flooded in by 1pm on Sunday.

“They turned to us after failing to get help from government officials. Some reflected on the lack of vegetarian meal options, and some had difficulties in getting food for their pets,” he said. “We need time to handle the vast number of cases.”

Chan said he understood the small contractor responsible for collecting refuse on the estate had reported difficulties in deploying extra manpower to the sealed-off blocks. He said the issue was “very serious” and had reported it to housing chief Frank Chan Fan.

Fellow lawmaker Joephy Chan Wing-yan from the Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) said she had relayed cases of disabled residents in Hiu Kwai House, one of the blocks placed under an overnight lockdown, to the authorities after they told her they could not reach officials to conduct door-to-door testing.

But former opposition district councillor Ivan Wong Yun-tat, who served the southern part of the estate for 13 years until his resignation last May, questioned if the lawmakers, newly elected in December, could effectively relay residents’ concerns to the administration considering their weak links to the neighbourhood.

The veteran from the Neighbourhood and Workers Service Centre said inquiries by residents continued to come in but he could only provide “very limited” help.

“I called up a manager of the Housing Department in my personal capacity to tell them about the garbage issue, and reminded some residents what they could pay attention to from the government’s releases,” Wong said.

“It was the government that chose to weaken all the well-established links among the community members.”

The district councillor for the northern part of the estate, Leung Kam-wai, a former leader of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, is serving a three-month jail sentence after pleading guilty to failing to comply with a demand to provide police with information about its activities.

Under the city’s district administration, the more than 1,600 mutual aid committees – voluntary bodies formed by residents of a building – were once regarded as an integral part of the Home Affairs Department’s network to promote help among members.

But the Post has learned that many core members of the 16 committees on the estate became inactive as they were told by the government to “gradually disband” by July.

“They are already doing preparation work to fold the groups just as the government had asked. What can residents expect from them now?” one insider said.