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1864 THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 2ND DECEMBER, 1899.
Excellency is provided for but the coolies without a Shelter will suffer. Only $4,000 to $5,000 is required for the Shelter, yet it cannot be done. Why not?
No plans or details of the building have yet been laid before the Public Works Committee in connection with the Governor's Peak Residence for their approval, and no money has been voted for it, yet money is being spent on the site.
11. The most important and most pressing public building is undoubtedly the Post Office. Fifteen years ago it was reported in the plainest language that the present Post Office was much too small for the work which had to be done in it. In 1896 a strong Committee reported-
“The accommodation in the Post Office, in spite of the recent arrangement by "which the offices of the Attorney General and Crown Solicitor have been placed at the disposal of the Department, is so cramped that there is not sufficient room "to sort two heavy mails at a time, while the space devoted to the business of the "Parcels Post is insufficient to secure the safe custody of parcels."
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There has been a vast increase in the business of the Post Office since that report was written.
There are many more mails coming in. There will soon be a fortnightly German mail in addition. Captain HASTING's reports emphasize more emphatically the need of space and the impossibility of working the Post Office with ordinary success without more space. The easy and successful working of the Post Office is of the first importance not merely for the business of Hongkong but of all China and Japan. The Post Office is a most successful revenue-making Department, yet the construction of a new Post Office is put off until the Law Courts are finished, in other words, ad Kalendas Graecas, for no one knows when the new Law Courts will be commenced. Government land previously appropriated for the purpose is lying idle. Interest is being lost on the money sunk in its reclamation; it is abundantly ample in size for a first class Post Office and most conveniently situated; it is a site deliberately selected by a strong Committee in 1896 for the purposes of a Post Office, whose report was approved by the Governor and Council and not objected to by the Secretary of State. Messrs. Cooper, COOPER, THOMSON, CHATER, MCCONACHIE, and Sir THOMAS JACKSON were the members of the Committee. Their opinions and recommendations were set aside in 1898 in Public Works Committee by the vote of the Chairman only, the Director of Public Works, newly arrived in the Colony.
However strong may be the arguments from convenience in favour of the site of the present Post Office and Supreme Court for the construction of the new Post Office, they become valueless, and worse than valueless, when it is discovered that the site can not be made use of for an unknown period, not less, at the very least, than five or six years.
It may be that the present site is the more convenient and the more central for the new Post Office and Treasury than the Reclamation site (although there is much to be said on both sides and the older and inore experienced men in the Colony favour the latter and think that in a very short time it will be the true centre of the Colony), but these arguments, if they were very much more cogent than they are, must surely give way to the contention that on the Reclamation site a new and perfect Post Office could be completed in two years from date; (there are local architects who could most certainly do the work if the Government are unable to do it), while if the present site is to be the site of the new Post Office we must drag along in our present discreditable state for five years more, going from bad to worse each year as business grows.
As to the financial aspects of the case, a letter from the undersigned to the Chamber of Commerce of the 17th ultimo (copy attached) shews clearly that the Treasury would profit largely by the removal of the Post Office and Supreme Court from their present position and by the sale of the land.