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SFH on potential sites for columbarium development
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     Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, after briefing the chairmen and vice-chairmen of the 18 District Councils on the latest developments of the review on columbarium policy this morning (April 21):

Reporter: What are the district council chairmen's responses in general?  

Secretary for Food and Health: In general, chairmen of all the 18 districts support our policy of having columbarium in all the 18 districts, although there might be some sites that are bigger, some might be smaller because of the different geographical and topographical constraints. In general, they all agreed that this should be the commitment for the 18 districts. This is quite a positive response and I would like to thank all the district council chairmen for their support. We have now identified pieces of land in every district. Altogether we expect that there will be up to hundreds of thousands of niches available in the coming 10 years or so. In the coming months, we will be continuing all the assessments of the various lands, regarding the environment as well as neighbourhood, and more importantly the transport and traffic arrangement particularly during the two festive seasons for respecting our ancestors. This is a very important aspect of assessment. When we can go back to district councils, then we can go through the normal process of getting funding and also support for the construction in the coming months.         

Reporter: (on the size of the sites)

Secretary for Food and Health: There are both big and small sites. The smaller one is in Kowloon City, and is very similar to the one in Tsim Sha Tsui District that we have proposed earlier on. The bigger ones are in Tsuen Wan, Tai Po and Yuen Long. These are bigger sites that could accommodate perhaps 10,000 or more niches. Together with the other sites that we have announced earlier, we expect that there will be a substantial increase in the number of niches.            

Reporter: (on initial responses of district council chairmen on the six new sites)

Secretary for Food and Health: In general, the chairmen of the district councils are quite supportive of the sites we chose because we did respect the feedback from some of the local residents and the districts. I hope that this will be a solution for the future facilities in various districts that require public support. Of course, nobody wants to have such facility too close to their home. But in general, they agree that every district should have a commitment to have those facilities.                           

Reporter: Which is the biggest site?

Secretary for Food and Health: In general, out of the 18 districts, the Northern District perhaps will have the biggest site in future because the area close to the border is quite a big site. But that also requires a very lengthy assessment regarding the feasibility of building road transport access and various other logistics.                        

Reporter: (on the timetable of construction)

Secretary for Food and Health: We will look at the sites that have good support and easy access. We will be able to give these proposals to the district councils for discussion later this year. For the larger sites, we probably will need another 10 or 12 months in order to do that.        

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Thursday, April 21, 2011
Issued at HKT 13:51

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