Treasury Office next door where the shroff gives a fixed fee receipt and enters the receipt number on the rent card. The rent receipt is then pasted on a large piece of cardboard known as an occupancy card which has on it a group photograph of the whole family. This occupancy card must always be displayed in the room occupied in order that the estate staff may see at a glance both whether rent payments are up to date and whether any unauthorized persons are living in the room. After this procedure the members of the family cease to be squatters and are henceforward known as 'settlers'.
61. For the estate staff intake days and the following two or three weeks are the most important of all; for it is during this initial period that the new settler must be weaned from many of the deeply ingrained habits and concepts that pervade most squatter areas. He is taught to make the best of the simple accommodation provided, and to forget his defeatist attitude towards dirt and disease. He is asked, for example, to buy a small covered dustbin, to make himself responsible for cleaning the passageway outside his room, and to use only kerosene for cooking. He is advised to whitewash his room, he is told what form of partition- ing has been found by experience to be most convenient and healthy, and it is made clear that he must not engage in any trade or handicraft which would be a nuisance or a danger to others.
62. Having completed the initial formalities and paid his rent for the first month he and his family then move into his room. It is fire- proof and weatherproof, and within easy reach on the same floor level there will be flush latrines, a washing space with a piped water supply, and bathrooms with cubicles into which he may take a bucket of water and have a bath, subject only to any restrictions there may be in the hours of supply-but these will be the same restrictions as apply to all other parts of the urban areas.
63. Plans of a typical seven-storey resettlement block will be found at Appendix II Drawing No. 1, and it will be noted that these blocks are in the shape of the letter H, the cross-bar of which accommodates the latrines. All seven-storey resettlement buildings are designed and constructed by the Architectural Office of the Public Works Department and then handed over to the Resettlement Department. The design for the original six-storey experimental buildings at Shek Kip Mei was so successful that very few modifications have been found to be necessary.
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