447
general revenue of the Colony? If so, then the money borrowed from the Loan Monies for general purposes should appear somewhere as an item of revenue, and the amount due from General Revenue to the Loan Fund should have appeared as a liability. The Returns by the Treasurer of the Assets and Liabilities of the Colony at the end of 1898 are not comprehensible as they stand, and are in need of very considerable explanations and additions.
The final settlement of the Estimates for 1900 should be postponed until these accounts are cleared up and re-stated.
4. According to His Excellency the Governor's statement and the Treasurer's Return before referred to, there will be a surplus on 31st December next, over and above the current expenses, in round numbers, of $400,000, and the Estimates for next year provide for an Expenditure on Public Works Extraordinary during 1900 of $331,100 only. The actual amount available for Public Works Extraordinary in 1900 is the said $400,000, plus the estimated surplus Revenue over the ordinary estimated Expenditure during next year, say, $436,720, or an aggregate of $836,720.
How is it that, with the large number of important public works now pressing for attention, many of the most urgently required, so small an amount out of the admittedly available surplus revenue is to be applied in 1900 in the execution of such works?
5. There is only one apparent justification for this very small estimate for Public Works Extraordinary in 1900, and that is the inability (if it exists) of the Public Works Department to proceed with works during the year to a greater extent than the amount estimated for $331,100; but that is, in fact, no justification or excuse as the remedy is a simple and easy one, to adequately increase the strength of the Department either temporarily or permanently, or to get the necessary work done under the supervision of competent local architects.
Instead of increasing the strength of the Public Works Department to meet urgent public necessities the Estimates for the coming year show a reduction in its strength, especially in Engineers, from what it was a few years ago.
This is a matter which urgently needs reconsideration before the final approval of the Estimates and the passing of the Appropriation Ordinance for 1900.
6. There is apparently abundant available funds for the more urgently needed public works. The sound basis on which to proceed in the expenditure of that money is to arrange the list of works to be done in the order of their importance and urgency, to take the most urgent in hand without delay and to devote a portion of the funds in hand to providing, as an extraordinary expenditure, the necessary staff for the purpose of superintending the work. There is no reason why an estimate for Extraordinary Public Works should not include the provision of an extraordinary supply of officers to superintend their execution.
7. What are the Extraordinary Public Works now in contemplation, and which of these are in their order the most urgent and the most important?
3. His Excellency the Governor pointed out in his address to the Council the "overwhelming importance of eradicating" the scourge of plague, and that, if any information could be obtained throwing light upon the causes of it, "no expenditure within the reach of the Colony would be too great to secure the blessing of freedom from such a scourge.' On this point there can be no difference of opinion. It appears strange that, among the Public Works Extraordinary estimated for, no provision is made for any work of any importance directly bearing on the Sanitation of the Colony or aiming at the improvement of the dwellings of the poorer classes of the Chinese population, it being common knowledge that the defective construction of numerous Chinese dwellings, the want of light and air, the overcrowding, and the absence of all sanitary appliances for the use of the vast Chinese population, are among the contributory if not the main causes of the plague.
9. More Public Latrines are most urgently required. There is nothing from a sanitary point of view more urgently necessary. For want of them, as Mr. DRURY, Sanitary Surveyor, points out in his admirable report, dated 5th August last, the whole fruits of our expenditure on the drainage of the Colony during the just ten years is so much money thrown away. The storm-drains are still sewers as foul as the sewers themselves. The subsoil is still being steadily saturated with filth. Innumerable houses are still the water-closets and urinals of a large number of the native population. The necessity for public urinals and for many more of them, and for the taking over of the existing private Latrines in the Colony, has been the subject of the most pressing representations to the Government since the first arrival of the late Colonial Surgeon in the early seventies. Every Sanitary Authority has reported in favour of it [See Evidence and Appendix annexed to the Report of the Insanitary Properties Commission dated 9th March, 1898]; but there is no provision at all in the Estimates for the purchase of private latrines and this is a provision for the erection of only one public latrine during 1900. work which ought to be taken in hand instantly and carried out promptly in its entirety.
Another urgent public work from a sanitary point of view is the overhauling and cleansing of the storm-water drains-old and new-which are still practically sewers and a grave danger to the Colony. Mr. DRURY clearly attributes the steady increase of typhoid in the Colony to these drain-sewers.
way.
10. There are hundreds of houses in the Colony condemned by every Sanitary Authority who has ever inspected them as uninhabitable either in whole or in part. There is nothing in the Estimates to indicate that this evil is to be attacked in any It cannot be done without expense. Either these houses should be bought up and reconstructed by the Government, or the owners should be forced to reconstruct and improve, with compensation, or Government should build model premises for the poorer classes of Chinese at Taipingshan or elsewhere; but there is evidently no settled plan for dealing with these houses and no money provided by the Estimates for even a single experiment in this line.
Why is not something done or attempted to be done, after all the years of enquiry and report?
The Estimates for 1900 provide for an expenditure (Items 24 and 25 Details Extraordinary Public Works) of about $15,000 for sewerage of Victoria and miscellaneous drainage works, but these are of the ordinary character and do not attack the sanitary problem in any way.
In the Estimates there is a list of 32 items of Public Works Extraordinary to be commenced or gone on with next year and the one or two really urgent and necessary public works (non-sanitary) that in the opinion of every man in the Colony ought to figure in that list are not there. The Shelter for chair coolies at the Peak, a mere flea-bite so far as expense is concerned, is omitted, although it might well, it is so small, be brought into the ordinary current expenditure. It is a work which every consideration of humanity should impel to the speedy construction. It is a question of the health of the working men, who for our convenience are exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather. It should be put in hand and completed before money is expended on a Peak Residence for the Governor. His Excellency is provided for but the coolies without a Shelter will suffer. Only $4,000 to $5,000 is required for the Shelter, yet it cannot be done. Why not?
1
Page 450
Page 451