XN000022-1995-12-15 — Page 3

1.

Land for Housing Authority

The Government announced today (Friday) that it has earmarked about 30 hectares of additional land for allocation to the Housing Authority for construction of public housing up to the year 2000-01. In addition, a further 30 hectares are under active consideration for inclusion in the public housing programme.

A government spokesman said the Government attached great importance to achieving its targets for both rental and home ownership flats for the period 1995-96 to 2000-01.

"In terms of land requirements, we agree that we need to identify further sites for the Housing Authority in order to ensure that our targets can be safely met," the spokesman said.

The Government has decided to earmark administratively six sites for use by the Housing Authority for the purpose of constructing public housing up to March 2001. Three of the sites are new sites not currently in the Public Housing Development Programme (PHDP).

The remainder are sites which are already in the PHDP but where the Government will help accelerate production so as to bring completion dates forward into the 1995-96 to 2000-01 timeframe.

"In addition, we have identified seven other sites which planning or other constraints make it impossible to earmark now for the Housing Authority's use. We will use our best endeavours to see whether all or part of these sites can be made available to the Housing Authority in due course," the spokesman said.

The spokesman said in order to ensure that as much as possible is done to expedite the statutory or administrative procedures to which these sites may be subject, a special committee on land for public housing has been set up.

It is chaired by the Deputy Secretary for Housing, with senior representatives from the Housing Branch, the Planning, Environment and Lands Branch, the Housing Department, the Planning Department and the Lands Department as members.

"If necessary, problems affecting a particular site will also be brought to the attention of the Housing Project Action Team chaired by the Secretary for Housing to accelerate development," he added.