Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1955-1956 — Page 28

modation for 5,000 settlers. The squatters involved in both these operations were all resettled in existing seven-storey build- ings, some in Tai Hang Tung and some in Li Cheng Uk.

45. During the autumn of 1955 there was a comparative lull in clearance operations. In October however a small but important operation was undertaken at Sung Wong Toi Street, near Kowloon City, to free a further area of land for the extension of Kai Tak Airport. At the same time 500 squatters were cleared from the vicinity of Wing Hong Street, in Sham- shuipo, to permit the building of a new school and the construction of a road and water main. On the planning side the autumn months were particularly busy: for 16 seven-storey blocks would soon be completed in Li Cheng Uk and Tai Hang Tung on the sites freed by the operations described in para- graphs 40 and 44 of this chapter. Altogether these would enable a further 41,000 squatters to be resettled by August 1956.

46. As a start it was decided to resettle in Li Cheng Uk and Tai Hang Tung those 11,000 victims of squatter fires who had not already been earmarked for resettlement elsewhere. The next decision was that none of the remaining accommodation in these blocks should be earmarked specifically for fire lane clearances: the main argument being that almost all the large squatter fires had either taken place already, or could best be prevented by pressing on with the clearance of squatters from land required for development. Plans were therefore drawn up for the clearance, between December 1955 and August 1956, of some 30,000 squatters from land required for housing estates, factories, schools, community centres, roads, drainage and waterworks schemes. Almost all these clearances were in northern Kowloon where the need for land was most urgent, and where the fire risk was still greatest.

47. The most important group of operations took the form of a concerted attack on the squatter area between the Castle Peak and Tai Po Roads in Shamshuipo. Here, in a one mile strip of extremely valuable building land, having a depth of about a quarter of a mile, there were originally 65,000 squatters, many of them living in large two-storey structures. Previous clearance operations, aided by half a dozen fires, had reduced

22