34. For squatter control purposes, the area of the department's responsibilities. is divided into four districts (Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, Kwun Tong and Tsuen Wan), each of which is under the charge of a Resettlement Officer and is divided into two sections with an Assistant Resettlement Officer in charge of each. Sections are sub-divided into patrol areas which are the responsibility of Resettlement Assistants and their supporting staff of gangers and labourers. The Resettlement Assistant is required to know his patrol area intimately, no easy task when an area may contain from 1,500 to 2,000 structures and between 6,000 and 15,000 people, and covers anything up to 3,000 acres of hilly ground.
35. The function of the patrolling Resettlement Assistant is basically to see that his area remains 'frozen', that is, that no unauthorized new building takes place. Structures which are presumed to have been erected before August 1954 or which have since been expressly 'tolerated' following subsequent surveys, the last in 1964, are specially marked and records are kept of them. Tolerated structures, as the name implies, are allowed to remain undisturbed until they have to be demolished to make way for permanent develop- ment, when the occupants are resettled into the estates. When a Resettlement Assistant finds an entirely new building or an unauthor- ized extension to a tolerated structure, he tries to persuade the owner to demolish it himself. If the owner fails to do this (as happens more often than not), the building is demolished by the department and the confiscated building materials may subsequently be used to help the poorer squatters in building huts in licensed areas.
36. The remaining list of duties performed by the Squatter Control sub-division is a varied one. There is a good deal of case-work and investigation, and Resettlement Assistants are sometimes asked to settle disputes and complaints among squatters. They are required to stop interlopers from taking up residence in huts which have been screened for resettlement, and they play a part in the procedure for clearing an area during a resettlement operation. They assist in the registration of squatter families whose huts have been destroyed or damaged by fire or typhoon, arrange temporary shelter in transit camps, of which the department maintains seven in Hong Kong, Kowloon and Tsuen Wan, and arrange for the subsequent resiting of the families concerned, if necessary. They also keep a record of destroyed
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