machinery. It therefore became necessary to provide resettlement factories in order to facilitate the clearance of undertakings that could not be housed in the ground floor workshops of domestic estates but which clearly required alternative accommodation.
111. The first of these factories was built in 1957 and since that date one single-storey and twenty-one multi-storey factory blocks have been built, comprising 7,861 units, with about 1.9 million square feet of working space. On 31st March 5,538 of these units were occupied by 1,738 individual concerns, an increase of 76 businesses during the year. 2,323 units remained unoccupied at the end of the year. The reasons for the slow progress in filling empty units have already been given in paragraph 57.
112. Some 83 different types of manufacture are represented in resettlement factories, a microcosm of Hong Kong's light industries. The commonest trades are metalwork, plastics, woodwork, weaving and printing, and over 9,800 workers are employed, many of them from the neighbouring domestic resettlement estates. Particulars are given at Appendix 7. Once established, factories are regularly inspected by officers of the Labour and Fire Services Departments, and also by the Commerce & Industry Department when Certificates of Origin and Commonwealth Preference Certificates are required for exporting.
113. The older factory buildings, which have five floors, are similar in appearance to a residential 'H' block, though the new ones with seven storeys are all built to an 'I' pattern. In the 'H' blocks, each bay accommodates two 198 square feet units, but in the 'I' blocks the units are of 256 square feet, lying three abreast in each bay. To save space as well as make it easier to allocate units to large factories, some of the newest blocks are four bays in width. Access to each floor is by a central staircase and ramp, with additional staircases at each end of the block. There are no lifts as the intention is to reduce building cost as much as possible, consistent with functional efficiency. A balcony around each floor gives access to all units and there are communal latrines and bathrooms. The roofs of some buildings are used for drying purposes. A plan of a three-unit bay, seven-storey factory block is at Appendix 13 and rents are described in Chapter 9 and listed at Appendix 4.
114. The minimum area which may be allocated to any one concern is one unit of 198 or 256 square feet, and the maximum is approximately 5,000 square feet- twenty-five units in the old and twenty in the new
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