302
40.
The Relief Committee are now dealing with the difficult problem of enabling and encouraging survivors to resume their calling in the harbour and on the sea. A Chinese sub-committee of 14 has been appointed to consider reports, prepared by its members working in pairs, on claims from former boat-owners for assistance.
The sub-committee, on the basis of these reports, will call on these people to obtain securities and furnish bonds of which the purport will be that in consideration of specified sums of money (probably about one-third of the original cost of their boats) to be lent or given to them, as the case may be, they will have built and brought into Hongkong waters new boats of specified descriptions.
These measures appear to me sound.
The loss of the harbour craft whose function it was to ply for hire as carriers of cargo and passengers to and from steamers and other vessels will no doubt cramp local business for some months to come and the early replacement of these auxiliaries to the Commerce of the Colony, so that coaling, discharging, loading and other shipping operations may soon again be carried on under normal conditions, is essential to prevent steamers getting into the
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