Relief Work and Vulnerable Groups
Throughout 1950 there continued to be severe poverty and desperate overcrowding, but exceedingly few signs of economic distress so acute as to result in outright starvation. Non-residential work for the relief of distress was carried on by many charitable or social organizations. Most of the assistance given was in the form of foodstuffs, clothing, free schooling, free repatriation, or outright grants of money. The Social Welfare Office also issued one free meal a day to destitute Hong Kong adults who were incapable of work and to any destitute Hong Kong child. The daily average attendance for all six welfare centres was slightly under 2,000, of which over 60% were children. Cooperative laundering, basket- work, gardening and poultry ventures were organized for groups of these destitutes. Three residential camps were also administered by the Social Welfare Office. Of these the one at North Point is a public assistance institution, that at Morrison Hill an experiment in community living, and the third a temporary camp at Rennie's Mills for seven thousand refugees, mostly from North China.
Residential care for nearly 2,000 deprived children was provided by fifteen orphanages, most of which were subsidized by the Government. An experienced Children's Officer was sent to the United Kingdom for two years' intensive study of child welfare, with the help of a Colonial Development and Welfare scholarship.
There are three Old Persons' Homes run respectively by a Buddhist, a Protestant and a Roman Catholic agency as well as several voluntary and official agencies from which a large number of old persons can obtain regular assistance. The Roman Catholics and the Lutherans maintain homes for blind unmarried women and girls. The School for the Deaf had forty Cantonese children, who were taught in Cantonese under the guidance of an exceptionally qualified Principal. Five of these organizations were subsidized through the Social Welfare Office.
Squatters
There were some 330,000 squatters in and around urban Hong Kong. Two years ago the total number was estimated at 30,000. Unfortunately during the first few months of the new Chinese Government's rule in Kwangtung there was a further influx of refugees into Hong Kong, where the population density was already over 2,000 per acre in certain districts. The urban areas were soon ringed with a cordon of 250,000 squatters, and this number continued to grow.
Most of them were impoverished refugees who scraped a living as best they could by jobbing, hawking, and generally taking in each other's washing. The very mass of them created a huge demand for goods and services which they themselves largely supplied, not infrequently by illegal methods. The proportion of adults employable for regular work was frequently as low as 5% and never rose above 20%. The Government has a systematic programme for clearing squatters from all urban areas and re-settling deserving families on approved sites. The policy has been successful and the fire, health, crime and social hazards caused by thousands of wood or matting shacks in open spaces, on empty building sites
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