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reasons the facts about our public housing programme are obscured in the public eye.
The work of the Housing Authority
becoming
When I see the news on television or read the paper after some demonstration or other, I wonder whether the public housing programme I know about is the public housing these people are complaining about.
We build estate after estate; we house more than one hundred people a day, and have done so for more than four years, we knock down old Mark I and Mark II blocks and replace them with modern blocks, or we convert and redevelop them into modern self-contained flats. Every day something is going ahead on many fronts to improve the housing conditions of the less well-off people of Hong Kong and to better their lot generally.
The plain truth about housing in Hong Kong is that a remarkable job is being done, something unequalled in any other part of the world, something we can truly be proud of when we look at some of our magnificent and I really mean magnificent-new housing estates.
Since the present enlarged Housing Authority was set up on April 1, 1973, thirteen new estates have been opened five of them during the current financial year.
In the same period, 350,000 people have moved into decent self-contained accommodation in public housing.
Twelve more housing estates are under construction, and two of them will be opened in the first half of next year.
Still more housing estates are in various stages of planning.
Where new estates have already been opened, more multi-storey blocks are being added as new phases are completed-most new estates are growing in this way, and will continue to grow until they finally emerge as self-contained estates of which Oi Man and Wah Fu are merely forerunners.
New towns in the New Territories
The emergence of the Three New Towns in the New Territories is fast becoming a marvel, even by our standards. Tsuen Wan now has 13 completed estates with two more on the way; Sha Tin is fast blossoming into a fully-grown satellite city with two estates already open and several more in various stages of work or preparation; Tuen
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Mun has already started to mushroom, with towering cruciform blocks dominating the skyline for miles around and pointing to where hundreds of thousands of people will eventually be living and working.
Home Ownership Scheme
Finally there is the Home Ownership Scheme, something that has gripped the imagination of the bargain-conscious lower-income segment of the population because it offers them, and people living in public housing, the chance to achieve the dream of home ownership at cost price.
Site preparation work is now under way at all six of the first batch of estates in the Scheme, and it is planned to build 42,000 Home Ownership flats by the mid 1980s, thus providing homes for about 250,000 more people.
These are some of the facts behind our achievements in public housing and a spectacular success story it is, too.
*
Environmental Pollution
On the subject of pollution control, I would once again like to bring the Council up to date on the activities of the Advisory Committee on Environmental Pollution, or EPCOM as it is more commonly known, on which I continue to serve as Chairman of the Water and Land Pollution Sub-Committee during its second term of office.
Consultants report and recommendations
1977 has been a year of some significance for pollution control. The consultants employed by the Government to formulate proposals for organisation and comprehensive legislation to protect the environment, completed their study and presented their proposals to the Government in July. The proposals contain the consultants' recommendations on the legislation, the programme and the necessary organization and staffing to protect the environment of Hong Kong. The general strategy of the proposals is to contain the present situation in the short-term, and aim for a gradual improvement over the longer term. To achieve this, a system of flexible environmental controls has been proposed, to be backed up by a strengthened technical organization to make the controls effective.
Throughout the three year period of consultancy, EPCOM has been actively involved in consideration and discussion of the consultative documents presented by the consultants and also in direct consulta-