A three-week Hong Kong-wide clean-up campaign for the Year of the Rat will start tomorrow.

The Food & Environmental Hygiene Department will thoroughly clean streets, public toilets, bathhouses, public places and hygiene blackspots like alleys. Common parts of old tenement buildings will also be inspected.

The department will extend the opening hours of refuse collection points and provide temporary junk-collection zones for people to dispose of large pieces of household waste.

To ensure cleanliness of public places it will strengthen enforcement actions and adopt a stringent approach to offences under the Fixed Penalty (Public Cleanliness Offences) Ordinance, including littering, spitting, illegal posting, and animal fouling.

The operation will also cover public markets, cooked food centres and hawker-concentrated areas.

District Councils will organise promotional activities to solicit local community support for the clean-up exercise.