If your business breaks the rules, then rewrite the rules. That's the tactic some columbarium operators have adopted to get around zoning restrictions. Opponents hope to stop them in their tracks.
Five operators - in Tuen Mun, Tsuen Wan, Tai Po, Sheung Shui and Yuen Long - have asked the Town Planning Board to rezone their land to allow the storage of funerary urns.
Three of the five were the targets of a recent government name-and-shame campaign to expose columbariums it says breach planning rules and land leases. Villagers accuse the two other applicants of the same thing, though they were not among the 52 problem operators named by the Development Bureau last month.
The unregulated market in urn niches is an escalating problem because of the city's shortage of spaces for holding the ashes of loved ones.
The applications to the board have worry villagers and a pressure group made up of residents affected by columbarium operations. They fear they could lose their only defence against problem operators.
Eddie Tse Sai-kit, convenor of the pressure group, the Columbarium Concern Group, said the board was the only gatekeeper for columbarium operations, many of which exploited legal loopholes in vaguely worded government land leases.
