HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
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There is the Government admission that the development of Kowloon is not without responsibility for the extra pressure by way of office accommodation. This official public admission that the time has come when Kowloon should be provided with at least branch offices where residents can do their Government business without coming across the harbour is of happy augury. In this respect private concerns, for years past, have shown how things can be done for Government's emulation. Take, for example, the Kowloon branch
branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the various branches of the Chinese banks with their head offices on the Island, not to mention the outstanding Peninsula Hotel, La Salle College, Diocesan Boys' School, Ying Wah School, the new St. Mary's School, and a number of girls' schools which provide greater educational facilities for children of families residing on the Peninsula. The recital of this list is an indictment of the unjustifiable faint-heartedness displayed by the Government in embarking on public undertakings of any great magnitude.
Pleasing as the fact is that the projected additions to the Kowloon Hospital will mean the erection of three new Blocks, I desire to add emphatic support to the urgent representation of my Senior Unofficial colleague for a Ward for maternity cases. With more wards there must also be a larger staff of doctors, nurses and attendants. I have seen the figures of the numbers of in-patients and out-patients, respectively, treated in the Kowloon Hospital for the first nine months of the current year. The figures are largely in excess of those for past years. If this ratio of increase should be maintained the space now available in the Kowloon Hospital will have to be doubled in five years from now.
An extract from the second annual report of the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children gives force to the Unofficials' representation on the inadequacy of the existing Hospital accommodation. The paragraph in the report 1 refer to reads as follows:
"Your Committee were much concerned as to the inadequacy of the hospital accommodation available for the children of the Chinese poor on the Kowloon Peninsula. At the beginning of this year that accommodation was limited to a maximum of five beds in the Kowloon Hospital, and sixteen beds in the Kwong Wah Hospital, with the possibility of further accommodation in the adult wards dependent on the demand for beds for adults."
May I hope that the plea I now enter for our less-favoured Chinese brethren will not fall on deaf ears?
I must confess my disappointment in the matter of the sewerage at Homuntin. The position to-day is the same as it was when I raised the matter in the Legislative Council on 5th
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