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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
there are about 60,000 squatters living on sites urgently required for schools, housing schemes, resettlement estates, factories and new roads and drainage schemes; another 40,000 are living in densely packed squatter areas in Kowloon which could be considered as serious health and fire risks. It is apparent, therefore, that urgent measures must be taken to accelerate the rate of construction of resettlement buildings, not only for the purpose of resettling our squatters, but also to enable other developmental programmes to proceed apace.
We are all quite aware of the fact that the Public Works Department, with its present limited staff, is doing a tremendous amount of work to implement the huge capital programmes that have been mapped out by our legislators. The present state of our roads is also keeping the P.W.D. pretty worried and busy these days. It is not surprising, therefore, that the P.W.D. is short of the necessary engineering staff to provide, in a reasonably quick time, water supplies and drainage systems in the areas which have been reserved for or which are suitable for the erection of multi-storey resettlement buildings.
It is already about six months since Government approved the setting up of a Development Division of the P.W.D. to open up new areas for the creation of satellite towns, for the provision of more sites for low-cost housing, as well as for resettlement accommodation. But to date, this Development Division is still like a child that has been conceived but which has another few months to go before it can be born—we all hope that it will be born in due date!
We have Town Planning Board which meets once in a blue moon, and a Town Planning Unit of the P.W.D., which is responsible, among other things, for coordinating the resettlement programme with other development programmes. I remain subject to correction, but to all intents and purposes this Town Planning Unit is at present merely a one-man unit—and this to serve the needs of the whole Colony of 2 million souls. I would certainly like someone to explain to me how our resettlement building programme is progressing in relation to town planning for the Colony as a whole. To put it in other words, can anyone tell me what long-term plans exist for the provision of urban amenities for the huge population in our resettlement areas and estates, which population, at the present rate of natural increase, will have doubled itself 25 years from now.
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Mr. Chairman, I am not attempting to praise, defend or criticize the work of the Public Works Department. That would be trespassing upon the territory of members of the Legislative Council. Neither am I attempting to express my views on the problem of general housing accommodation, which strictly speaking is not part of the functions of the Urban Council. But it is to be admitted that the question of resettlement is very closely bound up with the activities of the P.W.D. and the problem of general housing accommodation; in actual fact, resettlement can be regarded as a form of low-cost housing, specifically designed for our squatter population.
Members will recall that towards the end of last month a number of experimental self-contained flats were completed in the new Lo Fu Ngam Resettlement estate. I am sure that those of us who have visited this new estate were impressed with the feasibility of a similar type of flats being built for purposes of general low-cost housing. Here we have a glimpse of the future possibility of the merging of the work of the Resettlement Department with that of the Housing Authority, whereby the experience of the Resettlement Department will be increasingly drawn upon to provide economic housing for our citizens in the lower-income earning bracket. However, this is not a matter which I propose to go into detail since it should more properly be taken up at the next meeting of the Housing Authority. What we are more concerned about today is the fact that the Resettlement Department has the capacity to resettle squatters at the rate of 80,000 persons a year whereas the P.W.D. does not anticipate that it will be able to provide in 1957 multi-storey accommodation for more than about 40,000 persons.
With these remarks, Mr. Chairman, I now formally propose the Motion which stands in my name on the Agenda of today's meeting:
MR. LI YIU BOR seconded.
He said: The object of the motion is to ask Government to expedite the building of resettlement blocks so that the resettlement programme may be completed as early as possible. At the outset it must be pointed out that both the Public Works Department and the Resettlement Department have in the past co-operated to the fullest extent in this important field of work, and they
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