New Territories power broker and executive councillor Lau Wong-fat is embroiled in a row over a HK$5 million 'access' payment demanded from a group of villagers displaced by work on the cross-border express rail line.
Forty-seven families from Tsoi Yuen Tsuen in Yuen Long have bought land on which to build homes and farms three kilometres away in Yuen Kong village, Pat Heung.
The head of a group fighting for the villagers' rights said a relative of Lau (pictured) - Leung Kam-ting - and four other people requested a payment of HK$500,000 from the 47 families to use the only road into Yuen Kong. They say that request was followed by another demand from a middleman for HK$5 million to secure access to the land they bought.
A spokesman for Lau, who is also chairman of the Heung Yee Kuk, the powerful group representing New Territories indigenous villagers, confirmed Leung had made the HK$500,000 demand. Lau, who brokered the deal by which the Tsoi Yuen villagers bought the Yuen Kong land, is expected to step in tomorrow in a bid to settle the issue.
As a result of the row, the 47 families remain in Tsoi Yuen Tsuen despite the passing of the government's October deadline for them to move out for construction on the express railway to Guangzhou to start.
They say they are trapped, having paid HK$18 million for the 188,000 square feet of land in Yuen Kong this month in the hope they would only have to pay the HK$500,000 'access fee' agreed earlier. The 500-metre road, owned by 18 different parties, provides the only vehicle access to the land. If they cannot use it, the villagers cannot transport construction materials to the site.
