for Resettlement and his staff. However the Select Committee is con- sulted on any matters involving changes of policy, and also hears appeals against the Commissioner's decisions. In the New Territories the Commissioner for Resettlement has been appointed as the competent authority under these parts of the Ordinance.
55. The key figure in the management of the 23 estates is the Group Resettlement Officer. These officers, each in charge of a group of estates, are responsible for seeing that management policies are correctly applied by the estate staff, and for dealing with all difficult cases. They are also responsible for all local liaison arrangements with other government departments, for example with Police and Urban Services for hawker operations. During 1969-70 the eight officers concerned were each in charge of groups of three or four large estates with 20,000 to 30,000 tenancies and combined populations of 100,000 to 170,000 people. This is obviously too large a population to ensure that individual cases are properly handled, and during the year it was agreed that their re- sponsibilities would in future be reduced, the ultimate aim being to achieve the Housing Authority standard of one senior officer to 10,000 tenancies.
56. Each of the estates, which range from 3,000 to 12,000 tenancies, is under the immediate charge of an Assistant Resettlement Officer. An experienced Resettlement Assistant acts as second in command to help with general administration; in the largest estates there are two such officers. Another Resettlement Assistant is responsible for stores and sanitation and for supervising the labour force which cleans the common areas of blocks, the courtyards and open spaces. A further Resettlement Assistant in each estate is under the direct supervision of the Treasury Accountant at the departmental Headquarters to supervise rent collection and to administer the rent office. Further information on rents is given in Chapter 9.
57. In the older estates, a Resettlement Assistant or Student Resettle- ment Assistant is responsible for two Mark I or Mark II blocks, that is for 800 to 1,000 rooms and a population of 4,000 to 5,000 people. In the Mark III blocks with internal corridors, the manning scale is one officer to 750 rooms, or roughly three blocks, while in the taller and more complex Mark IV and V blocks, it is one to 700. These officers are required to patrol their blocks for four hours every day, and to enter each room once a month. Their basic function is to inspect the building and its fittings and to make sure that they are kept in
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