The representative of the Heung Yee Kuk of the New Territories submitted to the Chief Executive Carrie Lam on Wednesday (August 11) a "policy address" with the title "Improving the ancestral hall system and using land in the New Territories". Restrictions on the development of "Zu Tang Di", moderately lower the threshold for sale of land, and it is recommended that "Zu" and "Tang" should be allowed to cooperate with other organizations or companies to develop related land on the basis of retaining part of the project's interest in order to obtain sustainable benefits.
By Friday (August 13), Lin Weiqiang, the vice chairman of the Heung Yee Bureau, pointed out on the radio program that the specific proposal threshold of the bureau was the agreement of 75% of the internal members.
"Ancestral hall" refers to the land held by the clans and clans of the New Territories as a national collective of "ancestors" or "tang" under Article 16 of the "New Territories Ordinance". Land, and the manager’s decision to resell the land still needs to be approved by the Home Affairs Bureau before it can be implemented.
Although the Ordinance itself does not stipulate the threshold for approval of the transaction by the Bureau, in response to questions from Legislative Council Members in July this year, Commissioner Xu Yingwei pointed out that court precedents restricted "The Civil Affairs Commissioner must ensure that when processing applications for the sale of ancestral/tang land of the ancestral clan The application was approved by all stakeholders."
The Heung Yee Kuk of the New Territories submitted a policy address proposal to the Chief Executive Carrie Lam on August 11, and put forward a number of land recommendations to the government, including relaxing the development restrictions on ancestral halls.
(Photo by Ou Jiale)
Relaxing the threshold will not solve all problems
Relaxing the threshold for resale of "ancestral halls" will certainly help speed up the development of land, and the legal precedents of the bill can indeed be overcome by amending the threshold stipulated in the New Territories Ordinance, but there is actually a difference after the threshold is lowered. Issues that need to be dealt with, such as whether to consider the distribution of the ownership of the ancestral hall according to the "house" when calculating the proportion, and whether the total number of members is calculated based on the survival of the children and grandchildren at the time of registration or the transaction. These must be set Only open and unified standards can avoid more contradictions or disputes.
Moreover, in addition to disputes related to the resale of "zutang land," many of the court cases in the past on these lands were related to actual users' applications for "adverse occupation", that is, they tried to replace "zutang land," which had not performed management responsibilities for a long time. "Become an owner. However, the reason why such applications often end in failure is often based on the court's assumption that all members of the "zutang" directly hold the relevant land in the form of trust. Therefore, once the legal provisions are lowered, the manager decides to resell the land. The threshold cannot be ruled out that there is an opportunity to push forward more applications for "adverse right encroachment".
Tse Wai-quan, a member of the Legislative Council's construction, survey, and garden sector, suggested that the ancestral hall can be sold as long as 80% of males agree.
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Zutang and the government should also fulfill management responsibilities
The New Territories Ordinance stipulates that the manager of the "zutang" can handle land transactions with full authority, but in fact they are restricted by the threshold agreed by all the members of the "zutang". This situation is certainly not ideal and needs to be changed. They must also bear corresponding responsibilities in this regard. For example, the "Town Planning (Amendment) Bill 2003" once suggested that the manager should be held legally responsible for the illegal development of "Zu Tang Di" and forced the government to withdraw the law. One of the reasons for the amendment is that all members of the "Zutang" have the substantive power to make decisions. If the manager can get rid of this restriction in the future, it will indicate that they have to undertake these regulatory obligations.
On the other hand, in order to ensure that the rights and interests of members are still respected, "Zutang" should also be subject to stricter regulations, including regular reporting of the number of members and holdings of assets, rather than waiting for the manager to change many years later, as in individual cases. Talents update information slowly.
In particular, the government has been asked many times in recent years that there are no figures on the number of "ancestral halls". The implementation of the regular reporting mechanism is just to assist in the relevant statistics. In the long run, it will also facilitate the planning of the future development of the New Territories. The principal officials cannot find any more Excuse me to be lazy.
Finally, it must be emphasized that even if the government finally accepts Heung Yee Kuk’s proposal to lower the transfer threshold of "Zu Tang Di", it does not mean that the government has to abandon other development-related land options, including continuing to follow the "Land Resumption Ordinance" or other relevant regulations. Expropriation of these land for "public use", as announced by the Lands Department at the end of last month regarding the resumption of 106 pieces of private land for the Longbian Public Housing Development Project in Yuen Long, including the land held by six ancestral halls. This kind of government-led development approach cannot Because of the relaxation of the transfer threshold, it stopped.
There are many problems with the Dingxia plan. The retention and abolition of the rights should be reviewed and relaxed. The resale of the ancestral hall is desirable, but the management mechanism should be established while the expropriation of the ancestral hall should be strengthened.