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of course are very marginal operators, who have stayed in business only because they were not exposed to normal business overheads.
Then there is the Finance Committee which prepares the Authority's budget each year and checks on the expenditure performance throughout the year.
Finally and not least I must mention the Appeals Committee which, like all the others, has an Unofficial Chairman, It is a statutory committee created by the Housing Ordinance and its job is to deal with appeals made to it by persons whose tenancies have been cancelled for breach of the tenancy terms. These cases generally concern families which have got accommo- dation elsewhere and leave their public housing flats empty, as well as families which improperly sublet their public housing flat to a third party, often for a substantial profit. This Committee does a very essential job and ensures that no injustice is done in the process of recovering flats which are not being properly used.
I have spoken for rather longer than I had hoped but I trust that this look into the workings of the Housing Authority will give some better understanding of what it is all about and the problems it faces.
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