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Wednesday, April 25, 1973
SQUATTER CLEARANCE PROGRAMME UNDER CONSTANT REVIEW
The Government will keep the clearance programme for squatter areas
"under constant review" to ensure as far as possible that planned developments
are not held up.
This was stated by the Secretary for Housing, the Hon. I.M. Lightbody,
in the Legislative Council today in reply to a question by the Hon. Wilfred Wong.
About 60,000 people living in squatter areas might have to be cleared
this year as a result of the decisions to proceed with the Mass Transit Railway
scheme and to bring forward the new town development plans, he said.
Mr. Lightbody explained: "These clearance demands amount to a
bringing forward of clearance plans, because our new town development time-tables
have advanced these schemes by 5 to 10 years, and similarly our public housing
building programme, which generates significant demands for clearances, is
expanding."
He said that in recent years the clearance programme for land required
for all types of development had involved the clearance of around 20,000 persons
a year.
He said: "there has always been a close matching of clearance time-tables
with the availability of public housing; this because of our longstanding custom
of rehousing all occupants of tolerated structures in the clearance areas."
"In short," he said, "clearance demands are building up so rapidly
that we will have to weigh them against each other to determine priorities."
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