inability to pay the rent. It is figures such as these which have confirmed the department in its view that even the humblest squatter can, and will, find some means of paying the monthly rent for a cottage in a Resettlement Area or a room in a Resettlement Estate.
42. The clearance of the refuse dump at Kun Tong is a good example of the way in which even a small pocket of squatters can hold up a project of major importance. In this case 750 persons, living in 215 shacks spread over an area of about 10 acres, happened to occupy many of the key points in the Kun Tong Development Scheme. As soon as they were cleared, the Port Works Office of the Public Works Department was able to proceed rapidly with reclamation of the refuse dump and the adjacent foreshore to provide 78 acres of land for new factories, and at the same time to start levelling the nearby hills to provide sites for housing to accommodate upwards of 50,000 persons.
43. During June, July and August 1955, the Mobile Resettlement Unit carried out three important operations in northern Kowloon. The largest took place to the north-west of Grampian Road near Kowloon City. Here 5,000 squatters were cleared from a range of hills which had to be demolished to provide spoil for the extension of Kai Tak Airport out into the harbour. For most of these people resettlement took the form of a site in Chuk Yuen on which to build a simple stone cottage or wooden hut to an approved design. Some however were fortunate enough to be offered a Government owned cottage for rent in Ngau Tau Kok.
44. The other two operations undertaken in mid-summer 1955 were both to free sites for further resettlement buildings. In Kowloon Tsai 1,700 persons were cleared from around the Yung Wah Film Studio to enable six additional seven-storey buildings to be constructed in Tai Hang Tung Resettlement Estate, thus providing permanent accommodation for a further 13,000 settlers. The second operation was carried out to free the site for three new seven-storey buildings in Shek Kip Mei Resettlement Estate. Once again the terms of the exchange were favourable, 1,400 squatters being cleared to provide accom-
21
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.