194
COMMUNICATIONS
The company has a depot with three slipways and a building berth for the servicing and construction of ferries. A new, single- ended vessel, the Man Loy went into service this year in the dual role of cruise ship and ferry. She is 141 feet in length overall and 27 feet in breadth, and can carry 620 passengers. Two new double- ended ferries also came into service, each 146 feet in length overall and 27 feet in breadth moulded, with a carrying capacity of 734 persons. Two similar ferries are under construction.
The Star Ferry Company Limited is authorized by ordinance to run a passenger ferry service across the narrowest part of the harbour between Victoria City on Hong Kong Island and Tsim Sha Tsui on the southern tip of the Kowloon peninsula. The company now has 12 vessels in service supplying a total passenger carrying capacity of 6,682.
The 'Star' ferries run 21 hours a day until 3 a.m. and during peak periods a ferry leaves from each side of the harbour every two-and-a-half minutes on the seven minute journey. During 1964 50.6 million passengers were carried, an increase of 2.9 per cent over 1963. On several days more than 170,000 people were carried.
POSTAL SERVICES
Postal activity in Hong Kong is on the scale which would be expected of a commercial and industrial community of its size. One hundred million letters, cards and packets are posted every year and a similar number delivered. Another million parcels are despatched each year. Postal statistics are given at Appendix XXXVI.
Six new post offices were opened, and one was closed in the Colony in 1964, bringing the total to 40. One of the new offices is on the island, three are in Kowloon, including one in the Shek Kip Mei resettlement estate. Two offices were opened in the New Territories, one at San Tin, a rural area to the north-west and the other in the resettlement estate at Kwai Chung near Tsuen Wan. Construction of the new Kowloon Central Post Office commenced in April 1964 and is expected to be completed in two years' time.
Normal post office counter business such as the sale of stamps, handling of foreign parcels, registration of mail, sale of money