tens of thousands of persons homeless and costing the taxpayer millions or tens of millions of dollars in unproductive relief measures alone. These points are all elaborated in later chapters.
34. The departments concerned were accordingly ins- tructed to press on with a large-scale multi-storey resettlement programme as quickly as possible; the terms of the instruction were unusual, in that they required the expenditure of as much money as possible within the shortest possible time. By now it was clear that progress could at last be planned, since the buildings already being erected at Tai Hang Tung would provide a margin of spare accommodation; this margin could be used for the first stage of a "decanting" process, that is to say a series of clearance operations in which increasingly large areas, formerly sterilized by the presence of illegal structures, could be freed, step by step, for the construction of permanent reset- tlement buildings. There arose the conception of a vast multi- storey estate, which would house nearly 45,000 persons, between the Tai Po and Castle Peak Roads. By the end of the period under review the clearance of nearly 13,000 squatters from the site of this proposed estate was virtually complete-most of the persons cleared were rehoused in the new Tai Hang Tung Estate and plans for the construction elsewhere of similar accommodation for an additional 30,000 persons were far advanced. The programme included the demolition by stages of the temporary two-storey buildings which had been built at Shek Kip Mei just after the fire. These buildings had served their purpose, which was the provision of temporary shelter for some 35,000 persons as quickly as possible, but the time had now come to replace them with permanent seven storey buildings which would make it possible to provide much-needed open space and to improve very considerably the standard of hygiene and sanitation.
35. By now every consideration was subordinate to the rapid prosecution of this overall programme, and it was at last. seen clearly that the programme must on no account be inter- rupted, not even in order to expedite the rehousing of fire
17
Page 35Page 36
į