Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1955-1956 — Page 17

special unit of the department had and still has a permanent nucleus of only two officers, being brought up to the required strength by the secondment of perhaps five, or even ten, picked officers from the administrative staff of Resettlement Estates and Areas. The principle underlying this arrangement is that the delicate task of clearing squatters to a pre-arranged time- table, is better executed by officers with experience of administering settlers, and therefore able to put across the positive idea of resettlement as opposed to the negative act, or so it seems to a squatter, of clearance and demolition.

25. The first task of the Mobile Resettlement Unit is normally the establishment of a temporary office in the squatter area to be cleared, although in this case the unit was able to operate from vacant rooms in the adjacent Li Cheng Uk Resettlement Estate. On the first day of the operation clearance notices were issued to each of the 544 families, totalling 2,489 persons and occupying 207 huts, who were involved in the first phase of the clearance. These notices informed the squatters that they would be eligible for a whole room or a half room in the new Li Cheng Uk Resettlement Estate, for which the monthly rent would be $14 and $7 respectively, or, if they preferred, a site in Chuk Yuen or Tai Woh Hau Resettle- ment Areas on which to build, at their own expense, a fire-proof hut or cottage to an approved design. The clearance notice also called on everyone to register his requirements within one week, to collect within two weeks his letter of authority to enter a Resettlement Estate or Area, and to demolish his hut voluntarily within four weeks.

26. Squatters had by this time come to accept as final a clearance notice issued by the Mobile Resettlement Unit and appeals for the postponement of a clearance are normally few and half-hearted. Any appeals that are made usually come from the squatter landlords who will shortly be deprived of a most lucrative source of income, for many of them collect more rent in one year than the initial cost of the hut. In this case there was no serious opposition. By the end of the first week most of the questions had been answered: a great many personal problems had been solved or alleviated, and nearly all the families

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