XN000022-1978-04-26 — Page 48

The major problem of Hong Kong is sheer weight of numbers and the

rapidity with which they have built up through immigration and natural increase

since the 1950s. This has created great problems of providing housing, education

and social welfare and the whole infrastructure that makes life in a community

what it should be. But these things are being quickly provided.

For instance the Government already houses 46 per cent of the population

at heavily subsidised rents. In the four years from 1978/79 to 1981/82 the

Government will complete accommodation at subsidised rates for about one million

more people (or more than one-fifth of the population).

This year, for the first time, three years secondary as well as primary

education will be available and free for all children. This programme alone

involves the construction of 86 schools. The number of places in higher

education (the two universities and polytechnic) is increasing from 8,000 in

1973 to nearly 22,000 in 1981.

There is a similar increase in medical facilities, The increase in

hospital beds in the six years from 1978 to 1984 will be approximately 7,000

and in the same time eight new clinics and polyclinics will open.

There is a massive programme of engineering works to give access by

road or rail to areas where building land exists or can be formed by

reclamation of the sea, so that three new self-contained towns averaging

600,000 can be built before 1984, and built in infinitely better environmental

conditions than was possible in the old crowded urban areas and hut-covered

hillsides for which Hong Kong is known. A similar onslaught on traffic

conditions in the old urban areas is being conducted by the construction

of an underground railway and a mass of flyovers and some major arterial

roads.

These are just