quality of life issue letter in today's SCMP

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  1. #1

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    quality of life issue letter in today's SCMP

    was quite a good letter in today's SCMP:

    Latest Hong Kong, China & World News | SCMP.com

    "Government is failing to address important quality-of-life issues

    Updated on Nov 10, 2009
    It seems Hong Kong's civil servants have an answer to everything, no matter how irrelevant their answers may be.

    I refer to Anthony Hedley's letter ("Pollution policies should be left to competent authorities", November 5), in which he quoted an official.

    For someone in the Environmental Protection Department to misinform the public by saying that "the roadside index is less relevant for most people because they spend only a short time each day at such locations" is shocking proof of a blatant disconnect with public concerns.

    It also raises questions about the competence of officers charged with finding solutions to such problems.

    As a result, Hong Kong citizens suffer from an overbuilt and overpolluted city, overseen with limp governance. This response from the Environmental Protection Department echoes the reply from Central and Western District councillor Man Chi-wah, to the issue of why more railings are needed for natural paths on Old Peak Road. He said: "The fact that there has been no accident in the past does not guarantee there will not be one in the future. If someone gets hurt, and if it is found out from records that the council decided not to take safety precautions, no one can take responsibility" ("97pc oppose railings plan but it's still not died", September 27). So, the council's solution is to cover the paths in railings.

    No one has looked into other solutions. No one is qualified to determine what public safety means. And no one cares to think about protecting the natural environment. One can only imagine what the Swiss Alps would look like if our government was in charge.

    We are constantly faced with inaction or unqualified overreaction by our government - symptoms of the lack of skills and incompetence within it.

    With a host of quality-of-life problems making Hong Kong a wasteful and unbearable city to live in, where is our leadership? Or, at least, where are the qualified civil servants?

    They exist, but it seems they are not allowed to do their jobs.

    Hong Kong is a modern city with modern-day problems caused by unrestrained affluence.

    Modern solutions are accessible and readily available, as other progressive cities are already showing, including cities on the mainland, in Taiwan and South Korea.

    Our government cannot even implement a light-bulb replacement programme without getting it wrong and making a mockery of itself. Does our administration care about quality of life?

    Officials will immediately respond to a property floor numbering issue that the public is concerned about, but what about our quality-of-life problems?

    Will a property tycoon kindly pen a similar letter so the government actually listens?

    Deepak Madnani, Mid-Levels"


  2. #2

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    There are a fair few people who say that then quality of life in HK has decreased significantly since 1997. I personally haven't been here long enough to comment.

    I have to say that congestion (human and traffic) and pollution (including noise and light) make this city a far less desirable place of residence than it would otherwise be. I think the policy of letting in 50,000 new residents from the mainland yearly has to be questioned. The land use policy and general govt desire to pour concrete also has a lot of negative effects.


  3. #3

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    when i arrived in 1995, it was only the odd day that you couldn't see across the harbour. maybe a handful of days every year... now that has reversed. it is now quite strange to see the hills of the new territories from hk island... sometimes you can't even see TST from Central!

    back then, there was a letter to the editor that went something like this,

    " All these people complaining about pollution in hk are just whiners. I live in hk and i can honestly say that the state of the environment doesn't affect me at all. i won't worry about it until it does. now, can we all get back to making money?"

    i kid you not... (i used quotation marks, but this is not a direct quote, rather a paraphrasing of something that appeared in SCMP letters section about 14 years ago.)


  4. #4

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    fully agree with cara. have been here for 10 years now and traffic, pollution and noise is definitively getting more

    what annoys me particularly (except that i like it in hong kong in general) is that the government is doing nothing (serious) about it. all talk, no real action. why not banning polluting cars? why not change the fees of the tunnels to divert traffic better? why it took 10 years to implement the plastic bag fee? there are a few really obvious and easy steps that could improve life, but nothing is done. worse, hk govt officials always give the impression that the PRD is reponsible for hk pollution - although this has been disproven on multiple occasions already


  5. #5

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    When I arrived back in the 80s, you couldn't smell the air like you can now. Plus the only time you couldn't see to the hills of Kowloon from The Peak was when it was raining. And I never got nosebleeds in Causeway Bay then.