Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1954-1955 — Page 18

10. Leaving aside the investigations and recommendations which related only to the Shek Kip Mei fire, the committee's conclusions are worth setting out in some detail. First they said that the most immediate problem was the fire risk presented by the remaining large squatter areas, and they proposed that fire lanes should be cleared, by whatever means might prove most rapid and effective, in all such areas. Turning then to the long- term problem, they first considered and rejected the possibility of carrying out a comprehensive survey and census of all squatter areas; they said that there might be as many as 250,000 squatters or fire-victims, most of whom ought to be resettled, that the main problem lay in Kowloon, and that there was no advantage to be gained by splitting hairs over this figure until the job was much nearer completion. Then they considered the separate problems presented by Hong Kong and Kowloon. It appeared that so far as Hong Kong was concerned the problem might possibly be capable of solution by the vigorous prosecution of existing methods, but that in Kowloon the position was much less satis- factory. In Kowloon, they concluded, the squatter problem could not be solved unless squatters could be rehoused in areas substantially smaller than those which they occupied in squatter conditions; in order to achieve this-such was the density of population in squatter areas-resettlement must take place in buildings of six or seven storeys, a possibility which had already been discussed in the Public Works Department; and whilst, as has been seen, it had previously been possible at least to some extent to contrive to interest private capital in resettlement it was clear that the construction of the permanent multi-storey buildings now thought to be necessary could be undertaken only at the direct expense of the taxpayer.

11. It had never in the past been the policy of the Govern- ment to build houses for anybody except its employees, and the implications of the above conclusions were so serious that the sub-committee next re-examined the question whether the squatter problem would not be better left unsolved. If it was merely a question of fires, it could be argued, these could be prevented or at least limited by the clearance of fire lanes in squatter areas. This was the point at which the problem could

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