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in-Council may decide to be a public purpose.
4. That the Government is resuming the lands in question
for the purpose of laying out roads, and developing the land for
building purposes, and that the building sites available, after the
land has been laid out and levelled, are sold by the Government as
building land.
5. That the development of land for building purposes and
the sale of it,although covered by the extremely wide language of
the Crown Lands Resumption Ordinance,is not an official purpose
contemplated by the aforesaid Convention, which your Petitioners
contend,contemplated only such permanent official purposes as roads
fortifications,Government buildings etc., and that the Convention
contemplated free purchase of lands required for such purposes,and
not compulsory resumption.
6. That the Crown Lands Resumption Ordinance contains pro-
visions for the appointment of Boards of Arbitration to determine
the amount of compensation to be paid to the persons whose land is
resumed under that Ordinance. And that such Boards are duly consti-
tuted and their awards are duly carried out by the Government of
Hongkong.
7.
That the Boards have adopted a fixed method of valuing
cultivated land in this district for the purpose of compensation.
Awards are made upon a scale of values ranging from 5 cents per
foot in respect of the best class of agricultural land downwards;
and under no circumstances is more than five cents per foot ever
awarded by the Boards as the value of the land, even though the
market value of the land prior to resumption is several times that
figure. This value is arrived at by taking the annual value of the
crop that the land would produce, if it were used for purely agri- cultural purposes,and capitalising it. The figure thus arrived at
is deemed sufficient compensation for the owners, on the ground that the owners are entitled to use their land for agricultural purposes
2.
only