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all public spaces between the blocks, including courtyards, hawker bazaars, pavements, slopes, roads and playgrounds.
MR. HU:- Mr. Chairman, may I ask one supplementary? How about the cleanliness of Resettlement Estates. Are they very clean or not?
MR. CHAN: If the Resettlement Department is responsible for cleaning them, then the cleanliness is their responsibility. Some of the resettlement blocks are cleaned through sub-contractors and others through direct labour. Of course, you know the "Clean Hong Kong" campaign is gaining momentum, and I have been assured by the Resettlement Department that they will give every support to this campaign to see that the estates will be as clean as possible. I think recently the Commissioner on his return from Singapore has promised that he will try and see that the estates will be clean too.
MOTIONS
(1) MR. B. A. BERNACCHI moved the following motion:-
"That applications for tenders for new shops in resettlement estates should be restricted to shopkeepers who have been cleared and who were entitled to shop resettlement under the old policy."
He said
Mr. Chairman, to outline the background of my motion.
The principle set up, especially after the Shek Kip Mei fire of Christmas 1953, was to clear gradually all squatter communities on land, particularly Crown Land, and particularly land which is needed for development, to multi-storey resettlement estates. There have been, over the years in between, many additions to (and a few subtractions from) this policy including most importantly the additions of more and more victims of natural disasters. But the basic principle remains the same, namely that the person is to be rooted out from his squatter surrounding and resettled himself, his family and his trade in a resettlement estate. From the first, it was appreciated that a lot of the persons who were to be uprooted were shopkeepers in the squatter area, serving the needs of the neighbourhood of squatters, and, from the first, these shopkeepers were given shop resettlement into ground floor shops in resettlement estates. The rentals of the resettlement estates were not ever designed for the Government to make a profit, but for the Government to get its money back over a period of 40 years with a reasonable rate of interest. This applies both to shops and to domestic rooms. The principle being that a squatter should not be made to lose either his home or his trade by being moved to resettlement estates.
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Acting on this principle, the P.W.D. eventually included large multi-storey factory blocks in certain resettlement estates, to enable a person carrying on a small factory business in the original squatter area to move to a floor on a flatted factory building. So far was this principle taken, against the advice of many people, including myself, it was decided to offer shops to pig-breeders and land cultivators as a sort of compensation for the Government not being able to offer them land for pig-breeding or cultivation in resettlement estates. This led to people being offered shops who did not know the trade of shopkeeping, and consequently frequent transfers of shops to other persons. It was at last decided, and I myself agreed with the decision, to offer them monetary compensation instead. Unfortunately this idea of compensation in money, being once established, certain persons in Government, including particularly certain officials of the Resettlement Department, wanted to take the principle further and offer compensation to other people, instead of accommodating them in the trade which they have been practising, in most cases, for many years.
Coincidental with this development of offering compensation to ex-pig-breeders etc., was the fact that there appeared a design of building more than double the height of the previous designs and therefore with far less shops per head of persons being resettled. So that, whereas 10 years or so ago, there were so many shops that we had empty because of lack of people to take them, there, almost suddenly, emerged a situation where there were more shopkeepers cleared than shops for them to go into. It was therefore decided, by a majority, to resolve the situation by offering them $6,000 compensation (later slightly increased) and taking away the absolute right to shop resettlement. At the time when the Urban Council originally decided that, it was not contemplated, in my submission, that the shops we did have available would go to anyone else other than cleared shopkeepers. The plan was for the shops to be let out on tender, the shopkeepers using the compensation as a basis for their tenders. I rather grudgingly agreed to these proposals, simply because I could see no other solution, although I anticipated that $6,000 or so compensation would be of little or no use to the shopkeepers unless they did succeed in getting a resettlement shop with it.
(Mr. Henry WONG arrived at this point.)
This basis scheme was decided upon two years or more ago. It was decided upon because of the shortage of shops and not in any way because the Government, in fact, wanted the small amount of money that the tender system would actually bring in. It is not as if it is a tender for rent.
The rent is fixed and is a reasonable amount.
The tender is for premium payable once and for all, and although the lease is said to be three years, it is not, I gather, the intention of either
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