Villagers and a concern group helping them have taken to the Legislative Council their battle against the widening of a bridge in Kap Lung Village, in Tai Lam Country Park.
Inhabitants in the village, in the western New Territories, fear that village-chief Tsang Hin-keung, who requested the widening, will use the bridge to transport materials to build either a columbarium - a facility for storing funerary urns - or housing, and will force them out.
Tsang, who is also chairman of the Pat Heung Rural Committee, which is responsible for the village, asked the government to turn the footbridge into one that could take vehicles, when the government consulted him about work on the new fast rail line that will pass through at least seven villages in Pat Heung.
Tsang wants the widening as compensation for what he says is disruption to fung shui caused by tunnelling for the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link a kilometre away. Last November the government approved his application in principle.
The villagers say he has a conflict of interest, and complain the Lands Department has not been transparent in the approval process.
