Food and Environmental Hygiene Department
Shoes shining business was seen as a shrinking business in the eye of the Urban Council (since merged into the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD)). Therefore, since the early 1970s, the department refused to issue licenses to the shoes-polishers under normal circumstances. Renewing license was ceased as shoe shining was a dwindling trade in 2004. As a result of natural attrition, the number of licensed fixed pitch bootblack hawker decreases in Hong Kong.