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113. There is not always sufficient accommodation immediately available in the resettlement areas or estates to offer to squatters occupy- ing land urgently required for development and in these cases it is sometimes possible to provide alternative sites on which the squatters may rebuild their huts. These sites are prepared in the vicinity, under the supervision of the officers of this division, and are then allocated to the squatters who are permitted to rebuild their structures to the same dimensions as those they had previously occupied. During the year a total of 918 structures were moved in this way.
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114. Other duties of the officers of this division include the approval and supervision of repairs to squatter huts, the eviction of unauthorized persons from resettlement estates or from areas which have been screen- ed for resettlement, and the demolition of structures and removal of crops from areas which are being cleared. Regular helicopter flights are also made once a quarter by officers of this department to check by personal observation and by photographs that no new structures escape detection by the ground patrols.
CHAPTER IX
FINANCE
115. Site permit fees in cottage areas were fixed in 1952 at an arbitrary low figure. These fees were increased on the 1st April, 1956 to the maximum amount it was considered that permittees could afford to pay and the revenue from permit fees as well as rents for Government- owned cottages now cover about two-thirds of the annually recurrent costs, but does not provide for the recovery of any part of the original capital expenditure of the areas. On 1st April, 1960, 2,630 cottages were owned by Government; of these 437 were built or purchased by Govern- ment and the remainder were gifts from the voluntary agencies that had built them. These cottages are maintained by the Department and rented to settlers at $10 or $15 a month, according to the site of the cottage.
116. The rent for a standard room of 120 square feet in the resettle- ment estates was fixed at $14 a month in 1954, when the first multi- storey buildings were under construction. This figure was calculated to cover all annually recurrent costs and to provide for the recovery in forty years, with interest at three and a half per cent, of the original capital cost including the value of the land at half the upset price.
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