Pet pup: Public housing tenants can now register and keep their dogs which weigh 20kg or less.

The Housing Authority has decided to uphold the conditions of restricting dog ownership in public housing estates.

The Subsidised Housing Committee will uphold the conditions in its Tenancy Agreement. Members will adopt a pragmatic and stringent approach in tackling unauthorised pet keeping, while ensuring control measures to keep public hygiene.

Members agreed that small household pets, including birds (pigeons excluded), hamsters, rabbits, tortoises and aquatic life should be allowed without registration, provided they do not cause any nuisance.

Wild life, exotic and domesticated farm animals will be disallowed.

A one-off exercise will be conducted in October allowing tenants to register and keep existing dogs under 20kg in weight.

This temporary permission will be granted until the natural death of the dog and is not transferable.

The animal must not be a fighting, dangerous or large dog as defined under the Dogs & Cats Ordinance, Cap 167.

Committee Chairman Ng Shui-lai said: "A set of stringent control measures have been devised by the Housing Department to step up control over dog keeping and to ensure that public health and environmental hygiene will not be compromised."

Applications will have to be filed together with supporting documents on licensing, vaccination, microchipping and desexing arrangements within three months from the date of registration.

There will also be restrictions on tenants taking their pets in lifts between 7am and 9pm.

The approval may be revoked if two complaints of nuisance caused by the pets are substantiated, or tenants are found by estate staff to have committed misdeeds under the Marking Scheme for causing nuisance.

Misdeeds of tenants for keeping unregistered pets or those who allow their pets to defecate in public areas will be subject to five penalty points for each offence under the scheme.

A tenant will be served a notice-to-quit when 16 points have been accumulated in two years.

As cats are considered to create lesser nuisance than dogs, tenants are allowed to keep cats provided they are desexed.

To facilitate the new arrangements, the grace period for keeping pets granted at the launch of the Marking Scheme will be extended to the end of October.

"The temporary permission rule for existing dogs is a pragmatic approach which allows the department to monitor the situation closely. This, together with the Marking Scheme, will facilitate a more effective control over the number of pets and the possible nuisance caused," Mr Ng said.

"The arrangement is targeted on existing dogs kept by tenants. Members were convinced that the relevant clause in the Tenancy Agreement and misdeeds under the scheme should be kept since it is never our intention to relax the ban on dog keeping in densely populated estates."

This coincides with the fact that about 70% of respondents in a survey conducted by the department in August said that pet keeping should not be allowed in estates, worrying that it will bring an adverse impact on environmental hygiene.

Mr Ng called on pet keeping tenants to exercise self-discipline and observe the no-nuisance rule seriously or they face the risk of losing their tenancy.