A housewife was fined $1,500 for littering after dropping what she says was her house key near her home.
Her penalty notice, seen by the South China Morning Post, charged her with littering with a key on January 3.
"While I was pulling out my coin purse, I felt that some other thing might have slipped out from my pocket," Lau Shiu-fun, 55, wrote in a complaint filed with the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD), the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau, and the Ombudsman. "Within seconds, I found that a door key of mine was on the floor. As soon as I started to reach down to pick up my key, four male officers of the FEHD rushed in and essentially formed a man-wall, totally blocked my way and forbade me from picking up my key.
"They claimed that I had committed littering! Oh, for God's sake, who would litter with their own home's door key?"
The incident occurred at 4.30pm in Lok Shan Road, less than a block from her home in Ma Tau Wai.
Mrs Lau said she tried to reason with the officers but was warned police would be called if she tried to resist. On being told that, she insisted that they called the police. Instead four more hygiene inspectors showed up.
"All eight big men formed a circle around me while bystanders were watching," she said. "Were they about to fight an armed, 6-foot tall, soldier-like male criminal? I am just a 4-foot-11, 95-pound woman doing grocery shopping. I felt totally intimidated and insulted."
She said that after waiting 10 minutes without any police showing up, she gave the hygiene officers her personal details and accepted the penalty notice because she realised they would not let her go otherwise.
"I let the officers record my information and left the horrible place, while insisting that I did not commit any offence."
The hygiene department yesterday acknowledged it had received Mrs Lau's complaint but would not comment on any of her allegations.
"Ms Lau has written to us on January 6 disputing her liability ... for the offence," it said.
"We are considering her representation. If it is rejected, Ms Lau may also seek redress in court. In the same letter, Ms Lau lodged a complaint against the approach undertaken by staff of this department when issuing the . We are looking into the allegations."
Quoted from [url=http://www.scmp.com,]www.scmp.com,[/url]today. No link - paid website. $1500 is approximately $187.5 in American dollars. Hong Kong, following Singapore's footsteps, recently implemented a penalty system for littering.
A good thing? Certainly. But God, haven't these people ever heard of, say, accidents? Don't they know the meaning of the word flexibility?
Maybe the woman wasn't being entirely truthful. But let's look at the facts for a moment. She was charged with littering with a key? That seems just a little unlikely. Keys aren't the kind of things that are regularly seen in rubbish bins, even old keys. I would have thought that common sense dictates that the woman might have just dropped it on accident.
I'm quite interested to see how this turns out.
If we continue on this route we might end up being fine for breathing!
