and cottage areas, and also providing new electrical installations for other departments with maintenance offices in Estates. Technical advice and inspection of tenants' electrical installations are also carried out in order to ensure that they are safe.
104. The improvement of living standards has led to a rapidly increasing demand for more electrical supplies in estates as tenants buy more electrical appliances. This extra loading has caused break- downs in supply and it has therefore been necessary to carry out a programme for uprating the switch gear and rising mains in estate blocks. A total of 24 Mark III and Mark IV domestic blocks were uprated during the year, but it is still necessary to limit the electric loading in domestic rooms to normal domestic appliances. To increase the loading to cover heavy electrical appliances, such as air-conditioners, would require the installation of new main cables and a consequential increase in rent.
105. In order to improve and expedite repairs to electrical break- downs, two emergency standby teams were introduced to attend to breakdown calls from estates after office hours until 11.00 p.m. During the year, this section has installed 64 street lights in Rennie's Mill Village, completed electrical installation in Kwok Shui Road Transit Camp, reconditioned the public lighting in 10 Mark I blocks, and modified the public lighting system in other Mark III, IV and V blocks and reconditioned the electrical installations in nine ground floor schools in Tai Wo Hau, Wong Tai Sin and Chai Wan Estates.
106. 344 major and 1,522 minor repairs or improvement jobs were carried out by the Section during the year, at a cost of $812,655.80.
CHAPTER 9
FINANCE
107. Settlers in cottage areas pay quarterly permit fees for the sites they occupy. The amount is laid down in the Resettlement Regulations, and varies according to the size of the site and the location of the area; for a typical site of 160 square feet the permit fee is $5 a quarter in outlying areas and $15 a quarter in the more central areas. If the permittee does not own the premises he is living in he also pays rent either to the Government or to a welfare agency. Rents for Govern- ment-owned cottages are $10 or $15 a month according to location.
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