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to that resettlement estate), the other of 14 acres for a new big estate at Li Cheng Uk-all these estates being in the north- western part of Kowloon. The development of the 12 cottage areas in existence when the department started was also speeded up and work was begun on the development of 2 new cottage areas, one at Tai Woh Ping in the hills north of Shek Kip Mei, and one at Tai Woh Hau, near Tsuen Wan, in the New Territories. As a result of these measures the total population in the resettlement estates and areas had by the end of March 1956 reached the figure of 175,000, of whom 70,000 were in the cottage areas, 36,000 in the emergency two-storey buildings at Shek Kip Mei and 69,000 in new multi-storey blocks at Shek Kip Mei, Tai Hang Tung and Li Cheng Uk. Moreover the clearances made in the new department's first two years had freed a total of 149 acres of land for permanent development, 30 acres of which were for the construction of resettlement estates, and the remainder for other forms of housing, for schools and for important public works projects.
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1956/1957
15. The Resettlement Department has four main functions; the resettlement of squatters occupying sites required for permanent development, the resettlement of squatter fire victims, the administration of the resettlement areas and estates, and the prevention of new squatting. In its first year of existence the emphasis had perforce to be on the resettlement of the several tens of thousands of squatter fire victims living in temporary huts on streets and pavements into the buildings erected by the Government on the fire sites at Shek Kip Mei and Tai Hang Tung, and on the cutting of fire lanes through big squatter areas in order to reduce the risk of further large fires.
16. It was not until the middle of 1955 that squatter clearances had succeeded in reducing the sizes of the more combustible squatter areas to such an extent that the depart- ment was able to concentrate on the first and most important of its functions--the freeing of land for the various forms of permanent development required by a rapidly expanding com-
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