playgrounds equipped with swings, slides and other attractions, or rest gardens and sitting-out areas. The areas are formed, surfaced and fenced during the construction of the estate, and then handed over to the Urban Services Department to equip and manage. A number of newly planned or equipped areas were opened during the year, notably at Tin Wan, Wong Tai Sin, Yau Tong and Chai Wan estates. With the assistance of the Urban Services Department, a programme for planting trees and shrubs in all estates was started. These will provide much-needed breaks in the large vistas of concrete, welcome shade, and an aid to the con- solidation of slopes in the terraced estates. It is hoped that new tech- niques which enable more mature trees to be transplated will result in a higher survival rate than in earlier schemes of this kind.
95. Although most of the urban population need not travel more than a mile to a Government medical clinic, one of the features of resettlement estates for some years has been the number of vans con- verted into makeshift clinics and run by a variety of agencies. Many of these clinics, although termed 'mobile', long ago lost their ability to move under their own power; many of them have failed to maintain an acceptable standard of hygiene; and many have been in the hands of practitioners whose qualifications have not been registrable. The legisla- tion under which they were allowed to operate will cease to have effect at the end of the calendar year 1967, and before the end of the year under review the Medical Department had already begun planning, in consultation with the competent authorities for resettlement estates and the medical associations, to make it possible for them to be replaced by low-cost medical clinics in the charge of qualified or exempted medical practitioners, which will be housed on the ground floors of domestic blocks. Some facilities of that nature already exist in all but the newest estates.
COMMERCIAL PREMISES, SHOPS AND COTTAGE INDUSTRIES
96. One of the first modifications to the early resettlement blocks was the conversion of a number of ground floor rooms into shops or workshops. These were, of course, of the standard 120 or 240 square feet, and those squatters who had been running shops or workshops of a kind suitable for accommodation in domestic blocks before they were resettled were thus able to continue in their business after moving. Some of the later blocks built from 1961 onwards also had shop spaces of 155 and 310 square feet, and other sizes have been built over the years, while the combination of adjacent premises adds further to the variety
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