We all may have an experience of having lost something important to us. We would feel helpless and regretful particularly when we have dumped something carelessly as rubbish and are not able to recover it. The North District Cleansing Section of FEHD was highly praised for its dedicated effort earlier in helping a member of the public to recover his lost item. The assisted person thanked the team for their helping hands, and appreciated their professionalism as civil servants and sincere commitment to serving the public.

On 16 February 2024, the staff of the Cleansing Section learnt that a member of the public drove to follow a FEHD refuse collection vehicle to the North East New Territories Landfill in the hope of recovering an important item which was mistakenly disposed of as rubbish by him and his family. The team lost no time in communicating with the government departments concerned and supervised the related work on site, in order to help the assisted person recover the lost item as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the staff of the Cleansing Section listened to the assisted person patiently, comforted him and explained clearly to him the relevant procedures. After coordinating with other parties, the team arranged for the refuse collection vehicle to unload the rubbish at a suitable location within the landfill for him to search for the lost item. The whole process took around six hours. Finally, the lost item was recovered.

People in the neighbourhood who knew “Uncle Flour” well were in grief and felt deep sympathy over the sudden departure of “Uncle Flour” and the fact that he had no family member to handle his after-death arrangements. As “Uncle Flour” was regarded as a member of the community, the local residents hoped that the Government could exercise discretion in allowing them to collect his body as non-relatives and take care of his after-death arrangements, so that “Uncle Flour” could finish the last part of his life journey with dignity.

The staff of FEHD entirely understood their feeling and actively coordinated a joint effort with the relevant departments to handle the case in a humane manner. They prepared an eco-coffin for “Uncle Flour” and arranged for the neighourhood to hold a simple memorial ceremony at the farewell area of a public mortuary. Flowers were also provided for them to bid the last farewell to “Uncle Flour”, their old friend. After the ceremony, the coffin was transported to the Sandy Ridge Cemetery for burial.

Members of the local community thanked the staff of FEHD for making such considerate after-death arrangements for “Uncle Flour”. The staff felt very gratified because their work could help the deceased rest in peace and make the living feel relieved.

It is a Chinese tradition to show reverence for ancestors. In early 2023, the FEHD received a request for assistance from a citizen who wished to find the grave of his great-grandfather. Unfortunately, the citizen could not provide the name of his ancestor. The only clues he could give were a blurred photograph of the grave, and that the remains were buried in the Diamond Hill Urn Cemetery in the 1960s.

Locating a grave with incomplete information in the Diamond Hill Urn Cemetery, which spanned several hills and was home to over 50,000 graves, was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and the chance of success looked slim at first glance. Nevertheless, the staff of FEHD in charge of the case did not yield to difficulties and made their best efforts to look for clues through different channels.

They first searched through all grave records of the deceased with the same surname and buried in the cemetery in the 1960s, but to no avail. The staff persisted with their search and, based on the old photograph of the grave provided by the citizen, made special efforts to conduct thorough search during their inspections of the cemetery spread across hills. Furthermore, they asked the masons nearby about the locations of the graves on which tombstones were erected back then in the cemetery, and studied the stone used for the grave in the photograph for comparison. After consolidating all the clues, the grave was eventually found in a hidden location. The citizen and his family were overjoyed to have found the grave of his great-grandfather and expressed their heartfelt gratitude to the staff of FEHD. The staff pledged to continue serving the community with dedication and commitment by providing quality cemeteries and crematoria services for the public.