THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 2ND DECEMBER, 1899. 1863
difference of opinion. It appears strange that, among the Public Works Ex- traordinary estimated for, no provision is made for any work of any importance directly bearing on the Sanitation of the Colony or aiming at the improvement of the dwellings of the poorer classes of the Chinese population, it being common knowledge that the defective construction of numerous Chinese dwellings, the want of light and air, the overcrowding, and the absence of all sanitary appliances for the use of the vast Chinese population, are among the contributory if not the main causes of the plague.
9. More Public Latrines are most urgently required. There is nothing from a sanitary point of view more urgently necessary. For want of them, as Mr. DRURY, Sanitary Surveyor, points out in his admirable report, dated 5th August last, the whole fruits of our expenditure on the drainage of the Colony during the last ten years is so much money thrown away. The storm-drains are still sewers as foul as the sewers themselves. The subsoil is still being steadily saturated with filth. Innumerable houses are still the water-closets and urinals of a large number of the native population. The necessity for public urinals and for many more of them, and for the taking over of the existing private Latrines in the Colony, has been the subject of the most pressing representations to the Government since the first arrival of the late Colonial Surgeon in the carly seventies. Every Sanitary Authority has reported in favour of it [See Evidence and Appendix annexed to the Report of the Insanitary Properties Commission dated 9th March, 1898]; but there is no provision at all in the Estimates for the purchase of private latrines and provision for the erection of only one public latrine during 1900. This is a work which ought to be taken in hand instantly and carried out promptly in its entirety.
Another urgent public work from a sanitary point of view is the overhauling and cleansing of the storm-water drains-old and new-which are still practically sewers and a grave danger to the Colony. Mr. DRURY clearly attributes the steady increase of typhoid in the Colony to these drain-sewers.
way.
10. There are hundreds of houses in the Colony condemned by every Sanitary Authority who has ever inspected them as uninhabitable either in whole or in part. There is nothing in the Estimates to indicate that this evil is to be attacked in any It cannot be done without expense. Either these houses should be bought up and reconstructed by, the Government, or the owners should be forced to reconstruct and improve, with compensation, or Government should build model premises for the poorer classes of Chinese at Taipingshan or elsewhere; but there is evidently no settled plan for dealing with these houses and no money provided by the Estimates for even a single experiment in this line.
Why is not something done or attempted to be done, after all the years of enquiry and report ?
The Estimates for 1900 provide for an expenditure (Items 24 and 25 Details Extraordinary Public Works) of about $15,000 for sewerage of Victoria and miscellaneous drainage works, but these are of the ordinary character and do not attack the sanitary problem in any way.
In the Estimates there is a list of 32 items of Public Works Extraordinary to be commenced or gone on with next year and the one or two really urgent and necessary public works (non-sanitary) that in the opinion of every man in the Colony ought to figure in that list are not there. The Shelter for chair coolies at the Peak, a mere flea-bite so far as expense is concerned, is omitted, although it might well, it is so small, be brought into the ordinary current expenditure. It is a work which every consideration of humanity should impel to the speedy construc- tion. It is a question of the health of the working men, who for our convenience are exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather. It should be put in hand and completed before money is expended on a Peak Residence for the Governor. His