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COPY.
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Note re duties of Director of Public Worte in Hongkong
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1. For reasons which I shall endeavour to explain, the duties
of the Director of Public Works in Hongkong differ greatly
from those of ocrresponding officials in other Colonies.
2. In the first place, though the Colony is a very small one,
only 396 square miles in extent, it containe one large city -
Victoria, on the south side of the Harbour, with 262,000
inhabitants, -and a second city in the making,- Kowloon, on the
north side of the Harbour, with 97,000 inhabitants,
latter bidding fair to surpass Victoria in course of time. In
addition to this, the Port of Hongkong is one of the largest
Shipping Ports in the World and is the Headquarters of the
the
China Squadron. Its importance, from a shipping point of view,
is due to the fact that it is the principal port in the whole
of South China.
3. Owing to the limited area of the Colony, the entire administ-
ration of it, municipal and otherwise, from a Public Works
point of view, is concentrated under the Director of Public
Works. Not only so, but the oustody of all Crown lands is
vested in him and may add that, owing to lcoal conditions,
much of the land is of great value.
4. Other Oolonies which may be classed with Hongkong, such as
Oeylon or the Straits Settlements, are of far larger extent
and any towns or cities they may contain are under the control
of municipalities which possess their own Municipal Engineers
and Staff for dealing with Public Worka. Moreover, in such
Colonies, the custody of Crown lands is generally vested in a
Surveyor General who is independent of the Director of Public
Works. The Railway Systems are also sufficiently extensive to
be under separate control and, where Harbour Works of any
magnitude exist, they are also under separate control.
6. It will thus be seen that, whereas, in Hongkong, the Director
of Public Works controls the whole of the Engineering and Crown