that require a heavier floor loading. Processes involving a risk of fire, for example plastic work, are accommodated on the top floor.

69. On 31st March, 1961 there were four resettlement factories, three in Kowloon and one on Hong Kong Island. Between them they provided a total of 1,598 standard units of 198 square feet. In addition there was one single storey annexe designed to help to meet the demand for additional ground floor space; this annexe has 50 units of 168 square feet each. A total of 321 factories and workshops had been resettled in these factories. Two further factories were under construc- tion, one in Kowloon and the other at Tsuen Wan.

(a) Cottage Areas

CHAPTER VIII

FINANCE

70. Site permit fees in cottage areas were fixed in 1952 at a low arbitrary figure. They 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 covers 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, 1961 2,979 cottages were owned by Government; of these 437 were built or purchased by Govern- ment and the remainder were gifts from the voluntary agencies which 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.

(b) Resettlement Estates

71. 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 land at half the upset price.

72. The cost of construction, including site formation and piling, of a seven-storey block containing 432 rooms, each of 120 square feet, was then taken as $780,000 or about $1,806 a room, and to this figure

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