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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
in the next ten years or so. Without our massive public housing programme we would not have broken the back of the appalling housing problem of our people in the last ten years or so. We have all said that, if Government had depended on private housing, the people of Hong Kong would still be on the hillsides living in abjectly miserable conditions. Even for the private sector to act, Government had to set up a building Loan and Development Corporation to lend money to the people to buy flats in these high-rise buildings that private enterprise put up. Were it not for the Government through the Housing Authority putting up so many estates, and thus showing to private enterprise that there was a very bid demand and it could well follow the Authority's lead by also building low-cost housing to sell to the people and still made a profit, I dare say private enterprise would not have moved in as it did before the crisis to provide this type of housing in a way that was still remunerative. Now, Mr. Chairman, there are other aspects of public housing that must be looked into: what is the whole picture of low-cost housing for the people? It is not our concern as members of the Housing Authority merely to accommodate people, to move them into new buildings and thus just shelter them like cattle, but it is certainly our concern that we should raise their standard of living by providing better housing with well-qualified management. And on this question of management, perhaps to answer Mr. Henry Hu, when the Working Party was functioning, at that time the Housing Authority was so exercised over the importance of giving in-service training and pro- viding housing management courses for the people in Hong Kong, so that we would build up a well-trained cadre of housing administrators, which we have now done, that we did not think that it was necessary for the Working Party on resettlement to concern itself with a problem that was already exercising the close attention of the Hong Kong Housing Authority.
Mr. Chairman, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. BERNACCHI that the time has come to review the usefulness of the Housing Board. Perhaps Mr. BERNACCHI might remember that I put forward to the Working Party the proposal for the creation of such a Housing Board and I intended the selection to be a very high-powered one, but it did not eventually find the form that was intended and so the Housing Board has come to exist, not in the way that we meant it to do, but somewhat differently, lagging well behind the Urban Council and the Housing Authority in its recommendations to the Government. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make the point that the Government owes it to the people of Hong Kong, who have all worked so hard to bring about the present affluence-this strong position in which Hong Kong finds itself to-day-that Government owes it to the people of Hong Kong to help raise the quality of life for them. In Hong Kong's circum- stances they need and deserve far better housing than the resettlement type. Indeed, we have suggested that the key-stone to public housing
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