Tagged: Eric Kwok

Tung Chung’s new public market won’t open until at least 2023

The government has rebuffed requests from district councillors to build a public market in central Tung Chung.

Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) official have also declined to build a temporary market to serve residents before the new market is ready in five years.

Responding to Islands District Councillor members Eric Kwok and Holden Chow, the department says there is no room in the town centre for a market and it will go ahead with a site it has identified in Tung Chung east.

But that won’t be ready until residents move into Tung Chung east, one of the city’s major housing expansion projects, which won’t be finished until at least 2023.

Kwok says residents’ groups have been pressing the FEHD for three years on three possible sites: the temporary bus terminus on Tat Tung Rd, the vacant lot space behind the North Lantau and next to the bus depot at Chung Wai Street.

Until now, the department has not given a formal response.

In a written reply to Kwok, it said it had no plans to set up a temporary market, citing hygiene, safety, water supply and other issues.

“At this stage we are focusing our efforts on the construction of new public markets,” it said.

It said the new market was “conveniently” located next to the planned Tung Chung East MTR station, currently scheduled to open in 2026.

Kwok said new markets are also planned for the Ying Tung estate in Tung Chung east and Mun Tung, now nearing completion in Tung Chung west.

But both will be put to commercial tender, raising fears of a repeat of the Link REIT experience, he says.

Link REIT, a real estate trust which owns markets across Hong Kong, including Tung Chung’s Fu Tung, has been accused of pricing rents too high for small businesses and consumers.

Many Yat Tung residents travel out of Tung Chung to do their shopping because of the high local prices.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam committed to building a new public market in Tung Chung in her September policy address.

Government planners say Tung Chung’s population, currently below 90,00, will increase to nearly 250,000 over the next eight years as a result of new projects in Man Tung, Tung Chung west and Tung Chung east.

Tung Chung set to flush with fresh water for another six years

Twenty years after the first residents moved in, Tung Chung households are still flushing their toilets with drinking water and will be for at least six more years.

Currently all of Tung Chung’s 80,000 population uses freshwater from the Shek Pik and Tai Lam Chung reservoirs for flushing, in contrast to the use of saltwater in most of the city.

Pipes to carry saltwater have been installed but a pumping station won’t be built until reclamation for the Tung Chung East development has been completed in approximately 2023.

At an Islands District Council meeting last month, a senior Water Supplies Dept (WSD) engineer acknowledged that the pipes have been in place for many years.

District Councillor Eric Kwok, who raised the issue, said he had been told by the Water Supplies Dept (WSD) in 2009 that the pipes were already installed and asked why a temporary pumping station had not been built.

The WSD engineer said the original plan was to build the pumping station in the land reclamation area, but this was cancelled because the scale and planning for the new development changed.

He said WSD was working with Civil Engineering and Development Dept to make sure a pumping station, salt water service reservoir and pipes would be a part of Tung Chung reclamation and expansion. This was forecast to be complete in approximately 2023.

WSD told Legco last year that 345,000 of Hong Kong’s 2.5 million households, mostly in remote New Territories or islands districts, are still using freshwater flushing.

In a new report on local water supply, think tank Civic Exchange said Hong Kong was one of the world’s highest per capita consumers of water, with steep growth in demand since 1990. It says despite abundant rainfall the city is “actually more water scarce than parts of the Middle East.”

Photo: Shek Pik Reservoir (Lantau News)