efforts that are being made to cope with it, as I shall describe in
a moment.
3. This then is the general picture with regard to priorities for
public housing in Hong Kong. The boat dwellers have recently been
claiming that they should be allowed to jump the queue.
Who are
these boat people?
In
4. Hong Kong has always had a large floating population, most of
whom are fishermen, but including also a great many involved in other
marine trades, such as cargo handling. They are part of a wider tradi-
tion extending all around the coast of China. For centuries people
have lived their whole lives afloat, hardly ever going ashore.
Hong Kong the numbers have declined steadily over recent years as
people whose families have worked afloat for generations have taken
jobs ashore. Ten years ago there were over 100,000 boat dwellers in
Hong Kong. Today there are reckoned to be about 60,000. Many of
them still make their living from fishing. But there are also a
large number of squatters, that is people who, unable to obtain suitable
accommodation ashore, live on boats moored in the various Typhoon
Shelters and anchorages around Hong Kong. They fall into three
categories:
firstly, traditional Hong Kong boat people who, although
they have now taken jobs ashore, continue to live on their
boats for want of other accommodation;
secondly, Hong Kong land dwellers who have resorted to
boats as a cheap form of accommodation;
and thirdly, recent illegal immigrants from China who arrive
in their own boats and continue to live on them until they can
be resettled.
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