estimates, for Colonial Development and Welfare assistance for village irrigation projects.
The facilities of the Vegetable Marketing Organization were extended during the year by the establishment of more village depôts in the New Territories. These depôts are operated by farmers as village units to which they can bring their produce for weighing and from which they receive supplies of baskets and fertilizer. The depôts have been of great assistance in improving the efficiency of the arrangements made for transporting vegetables from the rural areas to the wholesale market in Kowloon. A further 15 diesel-engined lorries are to be added to the Organization's fleet replacing outworn military trucks which had been in use since the Organization came into being in 1946. The lorries will be purchased with assistance in part from a Colonial Development and Welfare loan, and the Marketing Organization has been materially assisted in financing their part of the cost by the extension of the period of repayment of an existing loan.
Assistance was given to enable a site formation to be worked out for the construction of several blocks of small flats for workers in the lower income groups, the area chosen for these flats being close to one of the Colony's main industrial areas in Kowloon. The cost of building the flats will be met by a low interest loan to the Hong Kong Housing Society from the Colony's own Development Fund.
A radio sonde station for weather reporting at very high altitudes was completed at the Royal Observatory with the aid of a Colonial Development and Welfare grant and this will be of great value to the Colony when more of the new high-flying aircraft start operating on commercial routes.
An earlier project to establish a Fisheries Research Station in Hong Kong with its own buildings and research vessel capable of operating over a wide area in the China Sea and the Pacific was abandoned and, with the Secretary of State's approval, replaced by a scheme of more moderate financial dimensions to set up a fisheries research unit in the University of Hong Kong under the direction of the University's new Professor of Zoology. Colonial Development funds will meet the capital cost of equipping a laboratory and constructing a research vessel and the Government will make a grant to the University to meet recurrent costs.
The tables on pages 16 and 17 give a financial summary of Colonial Development and Welfare expenditure up to the end of 1951.
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