Smoke-free floors in Hong Kong public housing ‘infeasible’, ‘unfair’: lawmakers
‘We have to protect the health of non-smokers but cannot deny grass-roots residents the right to smoke,’ lawmaker says
The designation of smoke-free floors at public estates to reduce Hong Kong’s smoking rate is technically infeasible and unfair to low-income tenants, lawmakers have said, following a statutory body’s proposal.
They also said on Monday that implementing the measure proposed by the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health could potentially prolong the already lengthy wait time for public housing due to the shortage of flats. It could deny residents the right to choose to smoke.
“It’s definitely only possible in new housing estates before people moved in, because in the existing ones, there is no way we could distinguish between residents who smoke and those who do not,” Scott Leung Man-kwong, a member of the legislature’s housing panel, told a radio programme.
“Let’s say we were to implement this in existing housing estates, how do we relocate those who do not wish to live next to residents who smoke elsewhere? This could bring about practical difficulties in putting it into practice.”
He added that there could be further issues, such as residents’ preferences for higher or lower floors and the direction the flats faced, noting that he had “strong reservations” about the measure that could not be solved in a short period of time.
According to him, residents frequently complain about smokers leaving their front doors open, exposing children and the elderly in flats along the same corridor to second-hand smoke.