Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1956-1957 — Page 21

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CHAPTER IV

CLEARANCES DURING THE YEAR

40. The most unusual clearances undertaken during the year were those on Hong Kong Island where suitable sites for multi- storey buildings are not yet available and where only a few sites are left in the cottage areas. It was therefore necessary to charter ferry-boats to move squatters across the harbour to be resettled in one of the multi-storey estates in Kowloon. The first occasion on which this was done was on the 5th April, 1956 when squatters had to be cleared from the Housing Authority's Cadogan Street site on the north-eastern slopes of Mount Davis. It was realized that the 956 persons occupying 210 huts on this site would be very reluctant to move to the far north-western corner of Kowloon as they had been living near Mount Davis for some time and were employed in the vicinity. Special preparations were therefore necessary to ensure the success of this operation and the staff engaged on it had to use all their powers of persuasion to convince these families that they would really be better off in a $14 room in the Li Cheng Uk Estate than in their existing shacks which, although very flimsily built of matting, had the advantage of being rent free. The chartered ferry-boats used a pier within walking distance of the clearance area and by 8 o'clock on the morning of the move large numbers of families were already on the way down, assisted by labourers from the department. Within half an hour the ferry-boat was ready to set sail on the first of its three trips and by that time the atmosphere on board was so cheerful that a casual observer might have had the im- pression that this was the start of a launch picnic, at least until he saw the large quantities of baggage and household goods of every description.

41. The next clearance on Hong Kong Island was in July when a long established collection of huts on the beach at Sandy Bay had to be cleared because of the building nearby of a new Children's Hospital by the Society for the Relief of Disabled Children. Some of these squatters were infectious lepers and had to be moved to the leprosarium on Hayling Chau Island. Others were disabled destitutes and these were admitted to the

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