LAND AND HOUSING
183
and as the needs of the Colony increase most of them will in the course of time be required to make way for permanent develop- ment. This process has already begun: during the year 578 cottages were cleared from the Tung Tau Resettlement Area, to be replaced by a new multi-storey estate; 401 cottages and wooden huts were cleared from Chai Wan to make way for an access road to the new Chai Wan Estate; and 58 cottages were cleared from Tai Hang Sai Resettlement Area to enable the link road between Tai Hang Tung and Shek Kip Mei to be widened. In these operations 6,231 settlers from the structures demolished were transferred to multi-storey estates.
At the same time it has been found possible to make a limited number of sites available for new cottages, in areas which are unlikely to be required for more permanent development in the near future, and as a result, an additional 724 cottages were built during the year, of which 331 replaced previously existing wooden huts.
The cottage areas are administered by the Resettlement Depart- ment, which is responsible for the provision and maintenance of terracing and paths. The cottages themselves are now built-by voluntary organizations, which either rent them direct to families eligible for resettlement, or hand them over to the department for disposal.
During 1959, 37,591 persons were cleared and resettled. This figure includes the 6,231 settlers who were transferred from cottage areas to resettlement estates, as described above, the remainder being fire victims, and squatters occupying land required for de- velopment. By these clearances 171.98 acres of land were freed for development, including sites for further resettlement blocks, for other housing, schools, hospitals and for Public Works De- partment engineering works, in particular for new roads and the widening of existing roads. The largest clearance operation during the year was for the new multi-storey estate at Tung Tau. The clearance area covered 13 acres and included squatter huts, cottages, factories and other structures. The operation was carried out in six stages and, in all, 868 structures were cleared (including the 578 cottages in the Tung Tau cottage area): twenty factories were resettled in the resettlement factory at Jordan Valley Estate;