taken over and the Public Works Department transferred the staff of the Squatter Patrols whose duty it was to prevent new squatting. The Screening teams from the Social Welfare Office joined about six weeks later. Additional administrative staff were appointed and by early June an effective unified organiza- tion was in being.
11. The new department's immediate task was to resettle the many thousands of Shek Kip Mei fire victims still in huts on the streets. This was soon accomplished because of the speed with which the Public Works Department erected two-storey temporary buildings on the fire site. Within a few months not only was accommodation for 36,000 persons provided in this manner but sketch plans had been produced for eight six-storey resettlement buildings which were also to be erected at Shek Kip Mei.
12. No sooner had the Shek Kip Mei fire victims been resettled, however, than another serious fire occurred on the 22nd July, this time at Tai Hang Tung, north of the Boundary Street Sports Ground. Once more the streets were full of fire victims and once more immediate action was taken to level the fire site for redevelopment. By now, however, sketch plans and working drawings for the multi-storey buildings at Shek Kip Mei were ready and it was therefore decided that as many similar buildings as possible should also be erected on the Tai Hang Tung fire site which was fortunately an almost level valley bottom.
13. As a result of the decision to use public funds for the development of the Shek Kip Mei and Tai Hang Tung fire sites, the squatter problem at the end of March, 1955 presented a very different appearance from that of fifteen months earlier when the Shek Kip Mei fire had occurred. At Shek Kip Mei the temporary two-storey buildings provided accommodation for 36,000 persons and there were an additional 18,000 in six-storey blocks, while at Tai Hang Tung eight seven-storey blocks had been completed and these would house 24,000 persons, 6,000 more than the number of fire victims. The cottage areas had also been developed to provide housing for an additional 13,000
persons.
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