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Urban disruption
70A I should add how well aware your Government is of the disruption,
inconvenience and dislocation caused by the intensity of works proceeding
in the city and particularly the Mass Transit Railway. I can only say
how much I admire the stoicism and understanding with which the population
is enduring these unavoidable conditions. Hopefully another nine months
should see us through the worst of current operations.
(7) New Territories
71.
Life in them has utterly
I turn now to the New Territories.
changed from 20 years ago, but the principles of administration and the
consultative machinery, though they have evolved, have changed much less.
72.
In some areas villages have been engulfed in large cities composed
of residents from the urban areas, and in others they are about to be.
In some remote areas, although there is no economic development or influx
of population, the old agricultural communities have virtually ceased
to exist owing to emigration, the fields are untilled, the piers and
paths that once connected them with the outside world are now largely
used by increasing numbers of hikers and campers.
.
73. In other areas the pace of development has been so rapid as to
make very great demands on land resources, and raise in an acute form
problems of compensation and social disruption.
74.
This has produced under-administration in the urbanised and
rapidly expanding areas. This is clearly a situation which must not
be allowed to drift further. The Secretary, New Territories has given
it much thought, and the Heung Yee Kuk has also made representations
about it, and as you now an experimental administration was set up last
year in the complex of Tsuen Wan/Kwai Chung/Tsing-yi headed by a Town
Manager, assisted by the advice of a committee of local appointed
unofficials.
/75. The ....
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