From the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
28 March 1979
tck 360/2
RECEIVED IN RIGIDAY RO. ST 3 0 MAR 1979
INDEX
1-
RAUBERY (Action Taken
fun
2967
www.man J29.3
Mr Wol.
Der Bes.
HONG KONG BOAT PEOPLE
No
F303
303
Thank you for your letter of 13 March in which you enclosed a further letter from the Society for Community Organisation (SOCO) raising five additional points about the problems of the Yau Ma Tei boat dwellers. I am replying in the absence of Goronwy Roberts who is abroad.
The first point is that the boat people did not ask specifically for resettlement in a Public Housing Estate: they only asked for resettlement on land and would therefore accept accommodation in Temporary Housing Areas or Transit Camps.
Temporary Housing Areas are intended for those people who, although not eligible under existing policy for direct resettlement into a public housing estate, are nonetheless in immediate need of accommodation. In these areas, a skeletal framework of huts is provided and space allocated according to the size of the family. Basic amenities such as electricity, water and toilet facilities are also provided. Transit camps are provided for those people who are made homeless through emergencies such as typhoons. They have minimal facilities but families are not expected or intended to stay in them for protracted periods.
Unfortunately, given the acute shortage of land in Hong Kong, sites for such areas and camps are extremely limited and they can only be made available on a short term basis, to those in immediate need. Priorities have to be laid down in the same way as for public housing proper. The arguments against the boat dwellers jumping the queue for public housing apply therefore in the same way to this temporary accommodation. However much we may sympathise with the boat dwellers they cannot be given priority over other equally deserving people living in sub- standard accommodation on land.
Mr Ben T Ford MP House of Commons
/SOCO's