1242
Page 199 of 242
378
2.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Speaking of the management of resettlement estates, Mr. Peter NG blamed inefficient and indifferent attitudes on the part of estates staff for many of our problems. Perhaps, on reflection, he will agree with me that the problem cannot be as simply stated as this; to a very large extent conditions in the estates today are attributable to overcrowding, to which process this Council has itself contributed in some measure by its additions policy in the past, and to the basic design of the estates and the original letting policies. For example, in all the old estates the available shop premises were fragmented into excessively small units for allocation to all sorts of persons cleared from development sites; this is one of the reasons why many shop- keepers spill out onto the areas in front of their shops. Many of the problems are attributable in a large degree to the invasions of hawkers into the estates and if you look at the circumstances under which these incursions took place, at a time when the department itself had no resources to deal with them, it is easy to see how we reached the present position; recent clean-up operations and resiting of hawkers have been enthusiastically received by the staff who now begin to see that it is possible to create decent conditions in the estates. I would be less than frank if I did not refer here to the contribution that some Members of this Council have themselves made to creating an air of uncertainty amongst estates staff. Nor is my own Headquarters free of blame for it has, in the past, perhaps failed to give sufficiently clear-cut instructions to estates staff as to what exactly we expect from them. The present situation then in most of our old estates is due to a combination of circumstances, and my department is now tackling them as systematically as we can. I am glad to know that in these endeavours we will have the complete backing of Members of this Council and in this context I am particularly pleased that the Statement of Aims in the Resettlement field is worded as it is.
3. Mr. James Wu referred to the need to produce competent and experienced estate officers, whilst improving the training of new recruits. As I have said elsewhere, we are at present studying the duties and responsibilities of various grades of staff in the estates, with a view to making quite sure that they are left in no doubt what duties they should be doing at which levels, and what they are answerable for. There is, of course, a need for some formal training in subjects such as simple building maintenance, law, person-to-person communication and other subjects of value on the job. But, as in the Housing Authority, the most valuable training you can give for this kind of work is to put a new recruit in harness with an able, experienced and willing colleague, and under the supervision of an imaginative and sympathetic superior. Given that the new recruit is keen and has common sense, the main problem is to develop in him a sense of personal concern to make the whole estate (not just his own block) the best possible environment
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
379
for the tenants to live in and for himself to work in. I believe that such an attitude can be made to prevail even in estates where control has yet to be re-established, but I do not pretend that it will be easy.
4. Mrs. ELLIOTT takes her fellow Councillors to task for a lack of concern about overcrowding in the older estates and she complains that the minimum space of 24 square feet per adult has become the maximum, while the real minimum has been reduced to 10 or 12 square feet. These figures are wrong. The right ones are to be found in Appendix E(ii) of the latest quarterly departmental report. They show that 75% of the families have 24 square feet or more space per adult; 22% have between 16 and 24 square feet per adult; and only 3% have less than 16 square feet per adult; in this context let us remember that according to the 1971 Census our figures paint a blacker picture than exists. As you know, our allocation quotas of resettlement accommodation provide, each year, 30,000 spaces for relief of overcrowding in the older estates. None of us is satisfied with the situation but Mrs. ELLIOTT is quite wrong to give the impres- sion that no one cares and nothing is being done. Very practical steps are being taken to do something about overcrowding in the older estates. Is the approved Shek Kip Mei conversion simply a dream? To the tenants, who know that Government has approved substantial funds to bring this estate up-to-date, it is very much more than a dream. She has ignored too the planning that is now going on to devise schemes leading to the eventual conversion or redevelop- ment of all our Mark I and II estates. I cannot understand why Mrs. ELLIOTT feels obliged to take such a positively negative line.
5.
Mrs. ELLIOTT went on to say that in the first seven months of the present financial year, allocations of resettlement accommodation to compassionate cases had not even begun. I cannot understand how she can make such an assertion without bothering to check the facts; these are that in the first seven months of this year, a large number of compassionate cases had been housed in our estates.
6. Mr. FORSGATE recalled the recent unhappy incident at Tsz Wan Shan when we had to order the evacuation of a complete block at that estate when the adjoining slope collapsed, and I much appreciate the well-deserved bouquet which he gave to the estates staff for their handling of this situation. This particular slope-and the same is true of most similar slopes in our estates-was surfaced with concrete and it appears that the drainage outlets from this concrete facing were closed by anti-vermin valves designed to swing open under pressure, to let water escape freely. Let me admit now that the concrete facing and valves were a Resettlement Department idea, to simplify cleansing. The trouble started when an underground water pipe was fractured at the rear of the block in question and large quantities of water built