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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 133 of 259
241
MINUTES.
The Minutes of the meeting of the Council held on 3rd October, 1967, were confirmed.
PAPERS.
THE CHAIRMAN laid upon the table the following papers:
(1) Report on the work of the Urban Council and Urban Services Department for the month of October, 1967. (2) Urban Council and Urban Services Department Statistical Report for the period 1st July, 1967 to 30th September, 1967.
(3) Report by the Commissioner for Resettlement on the prog- ress of clearance and resettlement operations during the period 1st July, 1967 to 30th September, 1967.
QUESTIONS.
(1) MR. B. A. BERNACCHI asked the following question:-
(a) Since it was on the recommendation of the Urban Council that Government started the present resettlement in multi- storey buildings and created the Resettlement Department, why in the pamphlet put out on the occasion of the 1 millionth settler is there no reference at all to this Council? (b) Why does the pamphlet confuse the two-storey Bowring bungalows built only for the victims of the Shek Kip Mei fire and long since demolished with multi-storey resettle- ment which superseded the privately built cottage resettle- ment?
(c) Would the Chairman assure the Council that this pam- phlet was not deliberately intended to exclude mention of the Urban Council as the originators of the idea of Government built multi-storey resettlement?
(d) Was a proof of this pamphlet ever put before the relevant
Select Committee of the Urban Council?
THE COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT replied as follows:-
I apologize, Mr. Chairman, for the length of my reply. Before answering the question, it may be helpful if I first explain the origin and purpose of this pamphlet. Members may recall that, in 1963, the Information Services Department produced and published a booklet, illustrated in colour, entitled "Building Homes for Hong Kong's Millions". With the rapid increase in the resettled population, and
following changes in the design of domestic blocks, I suggested to the Director of Information Services in December 1965 that the time had come to produce a revised edition. He agreed, and proposed that it should take a new form and include also information about other kinds of public housing. My department produced a draft text for the portion on Resettlement in January 1966 with a view to publication, if funds were available, in the following financial year.
Meanwhile, the Information Services Department's conception of the form which the new publication should take changed, and they advised a folder rather than a booklet, despite the limitations which this would impose on the length of the text. There were three reasons for this:-
(1) a folder would be quicker and cheaper to
produce;
(2) it could be more easily replaced quickly when it
became out of date;
(3) this form was more appropriate for the purpose it was intended to achieve, that is, to attract the attention of casually interested residents and visitors to Hong Kong, and to serve as an eye- catching introduction to the subject for people who might thereby be encouraged to take a closer interest.
Owing to more pressing commitments in the Information Services Department, the publication of the leaflet was delayed and copies were not available for distribution until shortly before the ceremony at Shek Pai Wan Estate last month. The Information Services Department was responsible for designing the programme for that occasion and suggested that copies of the leaflet might be enclosed in the pocket at the back, to which I readily agreed. The fact that it was first distributed in this way was purely fortuitous, and the leaflet was not originally designed or intended as part of the printed programme for that occasion.
Against this background I can now answer the question quite
briefly:
Firstly. The change in the format of the pamphlet neces- sitated a drastic reduction in the length of the text originally supplied by my department. I very much regret that neither I nor anyone else noticed that one effect of the revision was to omit any reference to the Urban Council.