CO129-560-17 Kowloon- expropriation of Chinese property 6-1-1937 - 4-9-1937 — Page 111

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One mat shed

as in the case of house owners and I have therefore made

a point of getting their co-operation. permittee who had illegally built a stone house in recent

years has refused to move.

The winning of the people to voluntary

evacuation has been effected by offering them the means to build new houses in place of thos e abandoned (estimates of village building costs were obtained before making them an offer), by giving them a site of their own choosing (they met me in a body at Kak Hang and selected the site), and not least by treating each owner and

tenant as an individual problem with his or her own

interests to be met and compromised.

But the chief difficulty has not been satisfying

known claims so much as finding out whom to satisfy. Many

de facto owners were not owners on the record, conveyances

and mortgages had been consistently left unregistered: the claims of mortgagees were urgent and difficult to be met without hardship to some one: numerous tenants paid no rent,

had no money and nowhere to go.

I can say however that in the event owing to the liberal compensation placed at my disposal by Government there has been no appreciable hardship imposed on anyone who accepted the Government's offer and that many have very materially benefited.

(SD) G. S. Kennedy-Skipton.

District Officer, South.

5. 1. 37.