340
LILL
During the year two Student Interpreters passed the examination for a third class cer- tificate and received appointments in the Police Department. Four new Student Interpreters were appointed, and at the close of the year there were nine Student Interpreters still pursu- ing their course of study. A full list of all the Student Interpreters is given in Table XIII. The class of boys attracted is good, and under the scheme the interpreters provided for the junior posts are incomparably superior in knowledge of English and Chinese to the men who were candidates for them previous to 1901.
19. General.
Early in the year a petition signed by 300 of the principal inhabitants of the New Territories was presented praying for a reduction in the rate of Crown Rent. The prayer was met by an undertaking to fix the present Rents for 75 years and the decision of the Government was accepted.
In May a petition was received from the inhabitants of New Kowloon complaining of the difficulty they experienced in complying with the building laws.
In consequence of a decline in the value of house property in Victoria a petition was presented in May signed by 68 Chinese land-owners praying for a re-valuation but it was impossible to accede to their request as the right of appeal had lapsed on the 6th April.
The loss of boats in the typhoon of the 18th September resulted in the issue of a large number of ew boat licences and duplicate licences, as damaged boats were repaired and new boats bought or built. Between the 19th September and the close of the year the number of licences issued was :—
Cargo boats,.... Rowing boats,
Other boats,
Duplicate Licences. New Licences,
123
119
59
105
45
375
227
599
The fees for duplicate licences were remitted by the Governor-in-Council. The cargo- boats that escaped undamaged and boats brought to the Colony from Canton and elsewhere, made big profits out of the necessities of merchants and ship-owners. Charges seven or eight times those paid before the typhoon were made by cargo-boats, and the Government realising the necessity for attracting boats to the Colony and for hastening the repairing of wrecked boats and the building of new ones, sanctioned a charge of four times the legal fare. On the 23rd November when it was thought the state of affairs had become normal, it was decided to enforce the legal scale of charges under pain of cancellation of licence.
The site of a second typhoon shelter is under consideration. The boat-people prefer Kennedy Town if a shelter could be built large enough to accommodate all the boats that might seek safety there. Failing that they are in favour of a shelter at Mongkoktsui.
In February and the carly spring it was necessary to again have recourse to water-boats to supplement the supply of water through the mains. The scarcity was felt more particularly in the Western part of the town but the Chinese business quarter was also affected.
The great depreciation in the value of the local subsidiary coinage was felt by the Crown Tenants in the New Territories when the Government decided to refuse to accept amounts over two dollars in subsidiary coin. The retail business of the Colony among the Chinese is transacted in subsidiary coin, and insistence on payments being made in legal tender was equivalent to an increase of seven or more per cent. in the Crown Rent.
The site selected by the Chinese for their small-pox hospital did not meet with the approval of the Medical Department. It is difficult to find a site in the neighbourhood of the town which meets the latest requirements of sanitary experts, and in the case of small-poy the Chinese particularly dread exposure to wind and treatment on the water.