124
8.
" obtainable in hotels and boarding houses) that Your
"Petitioners be allowed to acquire from Government a
"building area or areas at an economic purchase price
or prices, where on Your Petitioners will undertake to
" build with a view to affording accommodation to permanent
" residents at reasonable rates lower than those obtaining
" in hotels, inasmuch as Your Petitioners respectfully
" feel that, for the sake of maintenance and continuance
" in business of hotels and boarding houses, the question
" of accommodation for permanent residents should be
" divorced altogether from the problems of hotel-keeping,
" which has, for its basis or foundation, the accommoda-
"tion of transients. "
On the 15th day of December 1948 a reply was received to
the Petition from the Clerk of Councils reading as follows :
"COLONIAL SECRETARIAT,
11
Lower Albert Road,
Hong Kong
15th December, 1948.
"Gentlemen,
I am directed to refer to your petition of 20th
"October, 1948, in which you request that, for the reasons set
"out therein, the control of the rates charged by Hotels and
"Boarding Houses should be abolished, and to inform you that
"the Governor has caused your representations to be considered
" by Executive Council.
The opinion of the Governor-in-Council, after
" careful consideration of your petition, is that no case has
"been made out for the abolition of control at present. I am to
"add that the presentation of a petition in this sense at a
" time when a Committee, specially appointed to advise Government
" on those rates, is still sitting was in the opinion of the
"Governor-in-Council inappropriate.
10.
Mr.