2
1
201
grant by Government is now un- der consideration and I have no doubt that proposals will soon be put before this Council.
WATER SUPPLY
very
Immense Consumption Increase Unforeseen
I come now to the vexed ques- tion of water. Without going into details I may say that I doubt whe- ther anyone was to blame for not foreseeing the immense increase in consumption that immediately fol- lowed the completion of the Jubilee Reservoir.
The highest weekly consumption for the whole Colony in 1937 was 23 per cent. higher than the re- cord for previous years; in Kow- loon alone the excess was 31 per cent. figures like this would upset any estimate. Even so, the supply in the early part of this year would have been adequate if the Jubilee Reservoir had filled in 1936; the shortage was in fact entirely due to lack of rain in autumn and early spring and had nothing to do with the capacity of the aque- duct or with the distribution sys- tem.
In October last we were still hoping for an unseasonable down- pour but it never occurred to me that anyone would base strong hopes on a reservoir that was nearly empty at the beginning of the dry season.
COST OF WATER
The great problem of the cost of water which has been so long a subject of argument and debate is now, I hope, in a fair way of being solved. The Financial Secretary has undertaken an investigation of the whole matter, and I feel that there is nothing that can usefully be said pending the receipt of his report.
A few months ago I was interest- ed to read in one of the Canton papers-I think the Canton Gazette --an article on the hawker pro- blem in that City. I was interested because I had heard it argued that Canton had solved the problem by simply disregarding it.
That may have been so in the past but if so it would seem that the construction of wider streets and the introduction of modern ideas of sanitation and traffic control have rendered some form of regulation essential.
The fact is that the hawker sys- tem to a great extent takes the place of various systems of poor relief, and in a country where there are unfortunately many hundreds of thousands living on the edge of starvation, systems of poor relief are apt to be overworked.
UNRESTRICTED HAWKING Would Bring About Intolerable State of Affairs.
In present circumstances, I feel sure that anything like unrestrict- ed hawking would quickly bring about an intolerable state of af- fairs.
A large increase in the number of institutions for the aged and destitute, of reforinatories for street arabs and of homes for beggars and disabled persons might bring some relief but there is such
a
vast reservoir of distress and poverty here and beyond our bor- ders that I doubt whether, without very heavy expenditure, any ap- preciable effect would be seen.
This is a matter of considerable importance and I do not wish to appear to dismiss it off hand. On the other hand, it is a problem which primarily concerns the Urban Council by whom it has, I believe, been discussed at length on several occasions.
I suggest therefore that those interested should, as a first step, communicate their views to the Chinese representatives on the Urban Council and should request them to take up the matter with that body.
POLICE DEFENDED
In this connection I should like to say a word, if that is necessary, in defence of the Police. It has been suggested in more than one quarter that Police officers often arrest hawkers simply in order to improve their records and not for the sake of the enforcement of law and order.
I wish that were really the case because then the remedy would be obvious I have often seen and pit ed some wretched creature caught with a bundle of dried sticks, and yet one knows that it would not need many months' re- laxation of effort for the Island to be stripped as bare of vegetation as it is said to have been a hundred years ago.
Similarly, multiply the shoe- shiners by fifty and who could walk on the pavement? I am far from satisfied that this effort is un-
necessary.
CASE BOOKS
What They Mean To Police Officers
I have to admit that there are such things as case books, but not that they are worthy of the impor- tance they sometimes assume in Court proceedings. The official re- cords of a police officer's service contain no mention of the number of convictions which he has
obtained. The case book is a sub- sidiary record not without its uses when the value to the community of a police officer's services is under consideration. It contains details of important cases in red, and of unimportant cases in black ink.
It hardly seems necessary to point out that black entries are regarded as being of little or no importance. Red entries are im- portant, and rightly so.
With regard to the cost of the Police Force it should I think be made clear that the estimate for 1935 was just under three million dollars (at 1/4). Two and a half million dollars was the expenditure in that year when exchange rose as high as 2/6; when the 1936 es- timates were in preparation the rate was taken as 1/8. So that any increase in the cost of the Department is entirely due to the higher cost of sterling.
HOSPITAL DIETS
The Director of Medical Services informs me that the diet in the third Class Ward of the Tsan Yuk Hospital is the same as; that in other Government Hospitals, but that Chinese patients in Maternity Hospitals often prefer salted eggs and cabbage which are given them on request.
There are five air rings and eighteen bed rests on the Hospital Inventory. More could be supplied if thought necessary but serious operations are now seldom per- formed at this Hospital which has since July of this year been used for maternity cases only.
With regard to the Cholera Epidemic I think it is only fair to the Medical Department to say that the sense of dissatisfaction, which is I am afraid always ex- pressed more readily than its op- posite, was not shared by the re- presentatives of the League of Nations Health Bureau whom I had the privilege of meeting when they they were in the Colony.
CHOLERA EPIDEMIC Medical Department and
Undiscovered Stock of Serum
I do not see how the Medical Department can be blamed for ignorance of the existence in the Colony of a quantity of serum that no one but the importer knew any- thing about until August 16.
Two cases of Cholera were actu- ally detected among passengers ar- riving by train. If they had not been discovered they might easily have infected a number of others.
While on this subject I should like to refer briefly to one or two points raised by the Honourable Dr.
Li Shu-fan.
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