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Sherry Lee

Pressure is mounting on the government to reveal the full scope and extent of payouts it made to compensate for fung shui disruption caused by public works projects.
Lawmakers yesterday agreed to put the century-old fung shui compensation system under the microscope by putting it at the top of the agenda for a meeting of the Legislative Council's development panel.
Legislators also promised to investigate the legitimacy of a plan by New Territories village chief Tsang Hin-keung  to build a so-called 'fung shui bridge' and to ask the police to give protection to Kap Lung villagers who oppose the move.
The South China Morning Post uncovered figures showing that, at the very least, HK$72 million was spent on such payments in recent years. The figure may well be the tip of the iceberg.
Also yesterday, a former lands official told RTHK that there were misuses of fung shui compensation and a former secretary for home affairs criticised the system. 
Their remarks came a day after Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor  told Legco fung shui was not the government's consideration when assessing compensation. 
On RTHK's Backchat programme, former assistant director of lands Roger Nissim,  now adjunct professor in Hong Kong University's department of real estate and construction, described Lam's attitude as 'slightly ostrich-like'. 
'Let's be honest about it. Sometimes fung shui compensation is misused and used in an inappropriate amount,' he said. 'The administration has got to be aware of when it is being bluffed and it has got to have expertise and organisation to know the legitimacy of fung shui and its illegitimacy.' 
He was 'very surprised by what Carrie said'. He quoted a 1912 Legco report on fung shui compensation dating back to 1898. 
Nissim said the government was in denial and 'running scared' of an audit of fung shui payments. It needed a clear, transparent way to calculate such payments. 'I think they are running scared. This is not like selling a square foot. This is a subjective form of assessment. Fung shui compensation is difficult to pin down. You can't put a dollar sign on it.'
Former secretary for home affairs Patrick Ho Chi-ping  agreed the government was 'very scared' and 'does not have a set of rules' on fung shui compensation. 'They are used to having something black and white, such as guidelines to follow,' he said. 'But now this is a subjective judgment. No one set the rule. They don't know if this is good or bad... there is no absolute standard. You said it is good fung shui or that is bad fung shui, how do I know about it?'
Ho urged the government to look into the issue. 'Many good and bad things can be done in the name of fung shui. We have seen a lot of bad things. We should do more good things of fung shui,' Ho said.
Civic Party lawmaker Tanya Chan,  whose attempts to get detailed information from the Lands Department on fung shui compensation were rebuffed, said it was difficult to understand Lam's logic.
'The claims are related to fung shui, but now Lam said fung shui is not a consideration,' she told the Backchat programme. 
Meanwhile, villagers and concern groups who met legislators yesterday in their bid to stop the building of the bridge in Kap Lung in Tai Lam Country Park had their first victory.
'Since the fung shui compensation system involves a policy problem, we decided to table it in the panel for development,' Democratic Party vice-chairwoman Emily Lau Wai-hing, one of five legislators who attended the meeting, said.  
Three Kap Lung villagers, League of Rural-Government Collusion Monitoring  convenor Eddie Tse Sai-kit  and members of a columbarium concern group attended the meeting to brief legislators on what they called a loophole-filled fung shui compensation system. 'Kap Lung Village reflects a policy mistake,' Tse said. 'The fung shui payment is like a toll fee. What criteria did the government use to approve the fung shui bridge?'




Legco increases pressure for data on fung shui cash