Rapid population growth and the need to build a new frontier town quickly in Tin Shui Wai led to a secret deal between the government and a consortium of developers, says a scholar who studied the agreement.
The poverty-stricken satellite town, dubbed the 'City of Sadness' because of its association with domestic violence, murders and suicides, might have had a happier history were it not for the secret pact in the 1980s to limit commercial development - and the jobs that might have come with it.
The deal, revealed in yesterday's South China Morning Post, ensured retail businesses in government-owned buildings posed no serious competition to those in privately developed sections of the district.
The pact put limits on shops, markets and commercial enterprises in an area that could have sorely used the employment opportunities.
Dr Law Chi-kwong, associate professor in the department of social work and social administration at the University of Hong Kong, explained why the colonial government made such a deal.
Law, one of the few people outside the government to have actually seen the agreement, said: 'There was a pressing need to build more new towns in Hong Kong to satisfy the growing population.
'But the government itself was not able to do it without the participation of private developers.' He said the government had to rely on the private sector to realise its 10-year housing policy and thus offered incentives to the private sector during the 1970s and '80s to increase development. 'To the government, it was a win-win solution to sign the joint venture agreement,' he added.
