SCS visits Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (with photos)

     The Secretary for the Civil Service, Mrs Ingrid Yeung, visited the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) this afternoon (May 29) to learn more about the department's work on rodent prevention and control, hawker control, water seepage investigation, prosecution, licensing and public education. She also toured the Water Seepage Resource Centre and the Restaurant Licensing Resource Centre, both located at the Pei Ho Street Municipal Services Building in Sham Shui Po, where she also had an exchange of views with staff representatives from various grades in the department. 

     Accompanied by the Permanent Secretary for the Civil Service, Mr Clement Leung, Mrs Yeung first met with the Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene, Ms Irene Young, and the directorate staff to receive an update on the department's latest developments in various areas of work and the challenges they are confronting.

     As environmental hygiene is one of the main issues of district governance, Mrs Yeung encouraged the FEHD colleagues to strive to improve environmental hygiene and street management with a people-oriented spirit, and to utilise innovative technologies to enhance work efficiency in serving the public better. 

     Anti-rodent work is one of the key tasks of the FEHD. The FEHD staff demonstrated to Mrs Yeung how the alcohol rodent trapping device introduced last year can trap rodents effectively and also introduced the use of thermal imaging cameras with artificial intelligence technology to track rodent activities. With higher sensitivity and precision of this technology, the FEHD will take targeted anti-rodent actions based on the survey results, and deploy more effective anti-rodent actions in black spots.

     She then visited the Water Seepage Resource Centre and the Restaurant Licensing Resource Centre, which are open to the public, to learn more about the two centres that provide to the public with information on water seepage, food business and other trade licensing matters. Mrs Yeung subsequently visited the Prosecution Section and the Licensing Section of Kowloon and was introduced by the staff on the use of information and technology to streamline the workflow in handling prosecution case information and to reduce the manual process of calculating the area of food premises, with a view to enhancing work efficiency.

     Mrs Yeung visited the Hawker Control Team in the district and was briefed by a team member on the enforcement situation in regulating hawking activities and combating illegal extension of business area by shops, as well as how the body-worn video camera equipped to the Hawker Control Team can record the on-site situation when necessary in the course of discharging their duties more effectively and safeguarding the safety of the public and staff.