10
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
COMMISSIONer for ReseTTLEMENT:-Some of them were.
In fact
the pre 1953 concept was emergency resettlement. You had a different sort of categories; you had people living in tolerated huts in resettle- ment areas; people in approved structures in resettlement areas, all described in different ways. It wasn't in the estate at all, it was mainly the pre 1954 cottage areas.
MRS. ELLIOTT:-Mr. Chairman, is it correct that this 1,124,000 would include some people twice?
COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT:-Some of cottage areas have since been cleared of course and they have been resettled. But these are the existing number of people as from today, as from when the answer was prepared.
MR. BERNACCHI:-Perhaps, Mr. Chairman, that is the answer to my question, the missing 26,000?
MRS. ELLIOTT:-Yes, I think it is.
(2) MR. A. de O. SALES asked the following question:—
(a) What does the Commissioner for Resettlement estimate
the number of squatters to be at present?
(b) How many people are there in other categories eligible
for resettlement but still awaiting accommodation?
THE COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT replied as follows:-
In answer to part (a) of the question, I am to state that in accordance with the policy laid down by the White Paper "Review of Policies for Squatter Control, Resettlement and Government Low-Cost Housing 1964", the object of squatter control was to ensure that the then existing collec- tions of "tolerated structures" would be frozen. No new building of this kind would be allowed on Crown land or elsewhere. The huts themselves would not be cleared but their "frozen" size and numbers would be strictly contain- ed until such time as they were cleared in the course of the many development schemes then and now in progress, their inhabitants being screened and resettled in the normal way.
As a result of a resolution passed in the Legislative Council on 16th September 1964, the Resettlement Department completed a comprehensive survey of "squatter structures" on Hong Kong Island, in Kowloon, New Kowloon and