50-year-old Hong Kong glass company fights eviction after hut's permit found to be that of razed building
Owner says government error led to accusation that his building is illegal
The second-generation owner of a 50-year-old glass factory that faces eviction says his business is being wrongly accused of illegally occupying its site in Sha Tin.
Lands officials in June ordered the factory, Tai Hing Glass, to leave by July 6, after finding that the licence number of the squatter's hut that houses it was invalid. They say the number belongs to a building that once stood behind the hut but has since been torn down.
But the factory's owner, Lew Kam-ming, 48, says the business has been operating legitimately since the 1960s, and blames the wrong number on a mistake at the department.
The department in 1982 took stock of Hong Kong's squatter huts, marking each with a number and recording their dimensions, materials and uses. Lew's family has been operating the factory since well before that time, he has argued, and the hut has the official number RTW/158 on the outside. Therefore, he says, it must have been included in the initial survey.
The department, however, says the number on the hut comes from another hut that was torn down in 1982. It says the number was produced in a prior survey by a different entity, before the department was formed.
"My father established this factory painstakingly nearly 50 years ago and the hut has existed ever since. How would it be possible that our squatter [hut] is the only one without a license while others here are legal?"
