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with the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong and the Kowloon Hospital across the harbour, and various other Government hospitals, dispensaries and clinics. There is also a number of charitable hospitals, European and Chinese, the most well known of the latter being the Tung Wah and the Kwong Wah Hospitals, which cater particularly for the sick poor, and of Chinese Public Dispensaries which act as first aid posts in industrial areas. Free treatment in Government hospitals is provided for those who are unable to pay. Maternity and child welfare clinics are included in the health activities of Government, and in addition to the government dispensaries in the New Territories there are several dispensaries conducted by the St. John Ambulance Association.
198. In addition to a Workmen's Compensation Bill, legislation to give effect to the draft Convention (No. 32) concerning the protection against accident of workers employed in loading and unloading ships is under consideration.
199. By the regulations under the New Territories Regulation Ordinance already quoted action is being taken to render coolie lines mosquito-proof as well as to provide adequate sanitation, but the scope of the regulations is confined to the New Territories and the writer has seen little attempt to comply with their require- ments except at the Lin Ma Hang and Needle Hill Mines.
200. The incidence of tuberculosis has already been referred to in connexion with housing. Tuberculosis was recently declared to be a notifiable disease.
201. The health of a portion of the population is undermined by indulgence in or addiction to opium or heroin, but the use of dangerous drugs is not particularly common among workers partly on grounds of expense. For various reasons heroin has of recent years tended to supersede the more innocuous epium.
202. One prominent British public utility company in addition to providing its workmen with free medical service and accident compensation grants an invalid- ing gratuity to any employee invalided after more than five years continuous service and funeral expenses and a compassionate gratuity to the next-of-kin of an employee of over five years service who dies whilst in the service of the company.
The Commercial Press-a Chinese owned and managed company-has both a savings fund and a profit sharing scheme. The latter is suspended as a result of the present hostilities and employees over a certain monthly wage have been subject- ed to a percentage reduction in wages on account of the war which has caused the company severe losses in Shanghai.
Education.
208. Reference has already been made in paragraph 73 to the recommendation by a member of the Commission appointed in 1921 to inquire into the conditions of the industrial employment of children in Hong Kong that elementary Chinese educa- tion should be made compulsory. It was presumably intended that such education should be free as the then Director of Education remarked that he did not see how fees could be charged. The Census Report of 1931 shows that in the whole Colony there were 119,008 children of Chinese race of school age which was taken as from five to thirteen years of age-88,481 in Hong Kong and Kowloon, 17,940 in the New Territories, and 12,587 afloat in small craft in the waters of the Colony. Of these children 60,328 were males and 58,680 females. 47.94 per cent. of all persons of Chinese race, aged five and over, claimed to be able to read and write their mother tongue. The percentage of males was 69.73 per cent. and of females 18.03 per cent. There was, however, no standard or test and the census officer felt constrained to enter a caveat against the exaggeration of attainments.
The per- centage was much higher in Hong Kong and Kowloon than in the New Territories or afloat, illiteracy being almost universal among females of the latter two categories.
1
204. What percentage of literacy the next census will disclose cannot be fore- seen, but it may be said generally that Government has made practically no direct provision for primary vernacular education among the Chinese.*
* Mr. E. Burney in his Report (1935) on Education in Hong Kong recommended "That the Government should without avoidable delay build model primary schools where most needed in the urban areas and recruit and train the teachers required."