15
Concluder
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indigenous and transient population, and internationally, by reason of its geographical position. With Macao it is virtually the gateway to South China, with its vast population. No other territory I can recali has quite the same position of responsibility either in character or dimension. The sanitary control of Victoria cannot be divorced from the sanitary control of the Colony as a whole and, therefore, from control on an international basis. It may be politically expedient to give the Urban Authorities a wider measure of self-government but, whatever decision is arrived at, there should be no departure from the principle that, in essential matters of health control, Government must retain complete executive control, as it does ultimate responsibility.
I have referred to the question of housing in Victoria in other sections and put forward various recommendations. The position as a whole is summed up in the Report of the Hong Kong Housing Commission, published in 1935. The Committee confined itself mainly to a recommendation that "a permanent Town Planning and Housing Committee be formed to advise Government on town planning and housing matters. A comprehensive review of the position by Mr. W. H. Owen is included as an appendix; this gives a good background to the problem and should be read in connection with this report, together with related matter in the Wellington Review.
11
Overcrowding already exists in Victoria; its solution must depend on a number of factors. First of all, the Authorities must have a reasonably accurate preview of their liability in regard to population, secondly there must be sites on which to build and expand, and thirdly, there has to be some authority to sponsor and finance the acquiring of sites and the building of suitable houses. The preview in respect of population can only be obtained if some system of registration of persons residing in Victoria is devised and some assessment in advance can be made as to fresh arrivals. The availability of sites is restricted and any real increase in this must depend ultimately on the policy of the Government as to the distribution of industry and the allocation of Crown Land.
A policy as to the retention on the Island of strictly non-essential occupiers of building sites will have to be decided, together with planned zoning to secure the best use of building land, having in mind the settlement of a stabilized population.
The ultimate aim is to have all sewage of the Victoria urban area water borne. At present about one-fifth of the daily amount is dealt with in this way. The rest is disposed of under the bucket system. However, buckets are old and leaky and need replacing, only there are no replacements. I attended a meeting of the various departments concerned in an attempt to find a solution for this urgent problem. Discussion seemed to favour the idea, as a temporary measure, of conveying the untreated sewage by barges to Castle Peak for treatment in tanks in the hope that the matured article would be suitable for use by the Chinese agriculturalists on the mainland. However, no one knows what effect a comparatively short stay in the tanks would have on the disease carrying propensities of Chinese night soil and further research on this point is needed. Provided a procedure that would ensure a safe article was evolved there would be a strong case for employing the processed nightscil derived from the mainland to nourish the hardly pressed fields of the agriculturalist there. Colonel Scharff of the Malayan Service did some useful work on this problem but I don't know whether his researches sufficiently cover the position in Hong Kong.
In rural areas, whenever the occasion permits, action should be taken to establish Rural Health Boards on the lines adopted in other Colonies. There should be, for these areas, a plan of development formed under the advice and guidance of a social welfare organization dealing with this question on the broadest lines and representing all interests concerned.
References to urban and rural services will be found in a number of sections of the report.
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