whether rent payments are up to date and whether any unauthorized persons are living in the room.
51. 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 tenant 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.
52. Having completed the initial formalities and paid his rent for the first month he and his family then move into his room. Within easy reach on the same floor level there are 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.
53. Plans of a typical seven-storey resettlement block will be found at Appendix II Drawing No. 1. It will be noted that these blocks are in the shape of the letter H, the crossbar of which accommodates the latrines. These buildings are designed and constructed for the Resettle- ment Department by the Public Works Department and the design for the original six-storey experimental buildings at Shek Kip Mei Estate was so successful that very few modifications have been found to be necessary. The most important have been the addition of a seventh storey, and the strengthening of the flat roof so that it may be used either as public recreation space or for boys' and girls' clubs. Enclosed penthouses have also been added at either end and these are used as primary school classrooms. These schools and the boys' and girls' clubs are run by voluntary agencies.
54. The wings of each building vary from 140 feet to 320 feet in length, depending on the site, and the weight is taken on transverse reinforced concrete walls at ten feet intervals. Each wing is thus divided structurally into a number of bays each measuring about twenty five feet (the full width of each wing) by nine feet six inches, and access is provided by balconies on each floor which run completely round the four sides of each wing.
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