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by the Legislative Council. Mr. Whitehead omits to mention this fact; and he is apparently not aware of the wide powers to close insanitary dwellings at present possessed by the Magistrate on a complaint made by the Medical Officer of Health. A large number of houses have been dealt with under Ordinance No.34 of 1899 during the present year.
The suggestion that Government should bring up insanitary properties and build model houses is crude. Mr. Whitehead makes no suggestion as to how such a scheme is to be carried out or as to what would be the results, financial and sanitary. In this connection it should be remembered that the experience of Government in the direction of resuming properties has been anything but encouraging from a financial point of view. It cost Government about $820,000 to resume the Taiping-shan area, and but little of this large outlay has yet been recovered.