Chess Players, Elderly Group Fined For Gatherings

Police have issued their first fixed penalty notices under social distancing measures that ban gatherings of more than four people, targetting six men who gathered to play chess on Sunday and a further 13 people found outside a community centre on Monday.

Officers issued the HK$2,000 notices under emergency regulations imposed to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus.

In Kwai Chung on Sunday, police fined six men aged between 52 and 68 after a 999 call alerted them to the chess games. In Sha Tin on Monday, calls from the public led them to nine men and four women, aged between 58 and 84, near a community centre.

The government said police and other enforcement departments carried out more than 4,000 checks and issued more than 900 verbal warnings under the rules against group gatherings on Saturday and Sunday.

Meanwhile new rules banning bars from opening and forcing the closure of bar areas in restaurants took effect on Friday night. They followed a series of directives to restaurants, forcing them to reduce capacity by half and keep tables at least 1.5 metres apart.

Food and Environmental Hygiene Departments carried out 4,500 inspections and gave 175 verbal warnings under the rules at the weekend.

The police made more than 500 checks and gave 44 warnings, while the health and home affairs departments also carried out a smaller number of checks.

Earlier, officials said they'd carried out some 20,000 checks on new social distancing rules at restaurants in the first week after their implementation on March 28.

They issued a total of 28 warnings but haven't brought any prosecutions.

A union of Food and Environmental Hygiene Department workers said frontline officers were not given any training about the new rules and only saw the new tickets for the first time last week.

It said a lack of preparation had made executing the new law difficult.