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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
MR. CHEONG-LEEN:-Mr. Chairman, may I ask, under Standing Orders, since an amendment has been made whether other Members are entitled to express their views on the amendment?
MR. WATSON:-Mr. Chairman, on a point of clarification, the amendment has been withdrawn. A new motion under section 10(17)(i) has now been made.
CHAIRMAN:-In my opinion, Sir, an opportunity was given for Members to speak on the amendment proposed.
MR. CHEONG-LEEN:-Mr. Chairman, I have not yet expressed my views on the amendment to the motion.
MR. WATSON: There is no amendment, it has been withdrawn.
CHAIRMAN: The amendment having been withdrawn, and a motion having been put under Standing Order 10(17)(i), and it being my opinion that the question before the meeting has now been sufficiently discussed and that the mover of the original motion has had an opportunity to express himself under Standing Order 12, I now propose to call for a vote on the motion under Standing Order 10(17)(i) that the subject of debate be referred back to the Select Committee.
The question was put.
The motion was carried, with 11 for and 6 against.
MR. H. CHEONG-LEEN moved the following motion:
The Census Report has indicated the serious overcrowding existing in Hong Kong due to "gravely inadequate" housing. As this is a matter of concern to this Council, from the point of view of public health and hygiene, Government is urged to accelerate its public housing programme in order to alleviate the situation.
He said: Mr. Chairman, the 1961 Census Report states that there are 726,577 people who are living in conditions which appear to be "gravely inadequate". This figure includes people living in overcrowded tenements, basements, cocklofts, stairways, corridors and rooftops. It does not include many thousands living on house-boats and hulks.
The Report does not explain what is meant by "gravely inadequate" housing, but for the purposes of this debate we can safely take it for granted that housing accommodation for these 726,577 people is so "gravely inadequate" that it constitutes a public health and hygiene hazard.
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Section 87(1) of the 1960 Public Health & Urban Services Ordinance states:
"Any premises used for the purpose of human habitation or any part of such premises which are so overcrowded as to be dangerous or injurious to the health of the inmates thereof, whether members of the same family or not, shall be a nuisance which may be dealt with summarily under the provisions of section 127."
The Urban Council under the same Ordinance is empowered to make regulations to restrict the number of persons who are living in an overcrowded condition in a tenement building. The Council has thought it fit not to do so, however, in order to avoid inflicting an even greater hardship upon the large number of families who have no choice but to live in small ill-ventilated cubicles, bed spaces, and three-tiered bunks.
In recent years, Government has exerted its efforts to relieve overcrowding and the housing shortage in Hong Kong. Up to the end of June this year, the Resettlement Department has resettled 475,063 persons. This Department also has plans under way to resettle another 500,000 persons within the coming five years. Moreover, its standard of housing accommodation is improving from year to year, and the new Mark III resettlement blocks will be a laudable improvement over the old Shek Kip Mei prototype which has so well served its purpose.
Indeed, Mr. Chairman, there are many hundreds of thousands of residents living in pre-war slum buildings and in new multi-story slum buildings who would welcome accommodation in a resettlement estate, with its minimum standard of 24 sq. ft. of living space per person.
Members of this Council will recall the disastrous fire last week in a Un Chau Street tenement, in which 43 persons perished. I am sure that all members of this Council feel deep sympathy for those bereaved and those rendered homeless by this tragedy. In the single 4-storied tenement building that was directly affected by the fire, there were at least 200 persons living, and the habitable floor space per person was not more than 10 sq. ft. and was perhaps even less. In this connexion, understand that the Housing Authority has for some time been receiving applications from families whose living accommodation was no more than 3 sq. ft. per person. This, I am afraid, represents a realistic explanation of "gravely inadequate" housing at its worst.
Government's efforts in the field of public housing are not confined to resettlement only, as Members are fully aware. There are the programmes of the Housing Authority, the Housing Society and the Hong Kong Settlers Corporation, which all aim to provide good low-cost housing.
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