工人學生政治行動委員會
Pago 5
དམ,
WORKER-STUDENT POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
; M.
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the all-wood and corrugated motal squatter hits), thoro is also the advantage of security, since an iron door can be fixed to the unit, and locked. But the people could not go to the huts they come from, oveu af they wanted. Resettlement tenants are those who were occupying land which the Government needed for redevelopment. There are
a few social welfare cases who are given resettlement accommodation on compassionate grounds but the greatest numbers' come from huts or from tenement buildings which have since been demolished; if they wanted to go back, there would be nowhere to go.
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The Government presents the story as though the resettlement programme was undertaken for the benefit of refugees who needed homes, and tho whole scheme often gets presented as an act of munificence, or as concern for the welfare of the underpriveloged. And while this aspect was no doubt present to some extent when the programme was begun, it could not have been the main consideration, since there are still 802,000 people living in squatter huts or in cramped little homes in tiny boats, who need homes just as desperately, but nothing is done for them, since the other reasons do not operate. If one considers the housing programme ́ ́ás, Government's repayment of a debt it owed to the refugee immigrants, one will be much nearer the truth, and one will also see that the debt is
howhere near being paid; the Government has not repaid with a fair share of Hong Kong's prosperity, the refugees who brought so much to Hong Kong,
the prosperity possible.
and madd
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What did the refugees bring ? According to the Government Yearbook for 1956, the refugees brought four major advantages to Hong Kong, namely:
capital, seeking employment and security;
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ii.
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techniques and skills (and in most cases education which the
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Hong Kong Government had not had to pay for);
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iii. a commercial shrewdness and determination, often much greater
than that found in the native Cantonese population;
iv. a surplus of labour (which enabled employers to bring wages down
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to a very low level, and expand their industries enormously as
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a result of this saving)
فالی
These factors, like new life injected into an old system, enabled Hong Kong to develop at a pace it had never known before, and equally
important, enabled
the economy to diversify, and obange Hong Kong's role