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While this increased awareness and expectancy represent a potential danger to the government if it acts beneath public expectations, it also offers opportunity to the Government if it sets out to meet them and is believed to be doing so. The increased awareness and expectancy, if met, could generate a civic pride that could not have been stirred amongst the more fatalistic and apathetic and desperately preoccupied refugees of 20 or even 10 years ago.
12.
For these reasons, and in any case on its merits, in the course of 1972 Government drew up and announced long term plans: (a) to provide self- contained proper housing for every family in the colony and so eliminate remaining squatter settlements and overcrowding in tenements (new government housing for 1.8 million with the accent on new towns rather than merely on new dormitories); (b) to provide places for secondary education for all children (239,000 more places), and greatly to increase facilities for technical education (7 technical institutes by 1980 additional to the one already here), and to increase tertiary education by three times (to 16,000 places in all); and (c) for a five year phased development of the social welfare services, including the establishment of a Social Service Training Institute. These programmes were all logical developments of policies already in practice. But their simultaneous announcement, with its implied determination to put a term to the make-shift
X conditions created by the influxes of refugees in the
1950s and early 'Os was a calculated move intended to focus the attention of the population on Hong Kong as their home, and on the Government of Hong Kong as their government.
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13.07
To some extent the announcement of these plans has already achieved its object of catching the public imagination. But the physical and financial requirements are enormous and plans will take some time to develop on the ground. But if our forecasts are right and they assume continuing economic and thus revenue growth - they should be accomplished within about ten years, and of course will begin to show fairly dramatic results within 3 years, and very dramatic ones in the second half of this decade. The problem will be to build up interest and pride in the development of the city in other ways until they begin to bite.
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