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in addition to acquiring a very large area of land which can be used for public purposes, in return for an expenditure of approximately a million dollars.
7.
A detailed perusal of the Public Works Programme will show that in many of the larger items the works are already well advanced and to reduce the sums allotted to them in this year's budget would only mean a postponement of the expenditure with almost certain increase of cost and certain loss of efficiency. Of the new items of the first magnitude practicelly all those on which large sums are to be spent are matters of urgency, e.g. 127 the Shing Mun Valley Water Works. I have addressed you fully with regard to this scheme in other despatches and I can only say here that the experience of the last few months has strenghtened my conviction of its absolute necessity, as the consumption of water in Kowloon has now reached such dimensions that it has been found necessary as a result of some weeks of dry weather to restrict the supply of water to certain hours of the day.
97. Geol. Some money has been expended in site preparation but the building has not yet been begun. This however is a work which cannot be postponed and must be hurried on as rapidly as possible. The present position is most unsatisfactory. The existing gaol is terribly crowded and the outbreak of a serious epidemic would entail
consequences of which I do not care to think. We have
established a temporary over-flow prison in old coolie emigration sheds at Laichikok but they are very unsuitable
for the purpose and they are also overcrowded already.
Consequently, I have not only been obliged to abandon the policy, to which I attach great importance, of completely segregating juvenile offenders from other prisoners but have had at rapidly diminishing intervals to approve partial gaol deliveries involving the reduction of the
sentences
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