Gaming and public housing dominate concerns

The period before the agenda was quite lively, with many lawmakers requesting to address the assembly. The hottest topics were gaming and public housing, with Zhang Anting opening the new legislative session by asking the government to enforce stricter inspection on all VIP rooms’ license holders, and perform better research on candidates seeking new licensing in the field. The lawmaker also requested the reestablishment of the “Advisory Board for Gaming” in order to increase the transparency and inspection of all gaming-related activities.
Several lawmakers addressed the topic of public housing. Ng Kuok Cheong and Au Kam San urged the government to reinstall the point system established in the 1980s, which in their opinion granted a fairer and more accurate attribution of public houses to residents in need, instead of basing it on a mere “lucky draw”.
Ella Lei also addressed this topic, asking the government to place more emphasis on housing-related projects, since, in her opinion, “the houses are very expensive due to the lack of offers, and that is contributing to extra pressure on the families that decide to apply for public housing.”
Ella Lei referred also to the need to “restart some projects that are stopped or suspended in order to ease this pressure over public housing.”
Ng Kuok Cheong said “the latest lucky draw for public housing was ridiculous” regarding the number of people that were excluded, reiterating that from a total of 42,600 candidates, only 1,900 houses were attributed. Ng recalled that even from those 1,900, almost 800 are one-bedroom houses when the criteria to apply states that each candidate household should comprise four or more persons.