Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1956-1957 — Page 29

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53. For the estate staff intake days, and the following two or three weeks are the most important of all; for it is during this initial period that the new settler must be weaned away from many of the deeply ingrained habits and concepts that pervade most squatter areas. He is taught to make the best of the simple accommodation provided, and to forget his defeatist attitude towards dirt and disease. He is asked, for example, to buy a small covered dustbin, to make himself responsible for cleaning the passage way outside his room, and to use only kerosene for cooking. He is advised to whitewash his room, is told what form of partitioning has been found by experience to be most convenient and healthy, and it is made clear that he must not engage in any trade or handicraft which would be a nuisance or a danger to others.

54. The photographs opposite this page will give an idea of the contrast which a former squatter will find between his new environment and the one to which he may have been accustomed for some years. On his way home the day before he has probably had to thread his way along narrow, steep and unpaved paths flanked on either side by closely packed wooden huts until he has come to his own little shack or his cubicle. What will probably impress him most is the height and size of the buildings and the amount of open space, for less than 50 per cent of the total site area of a multi-storey estate is built on.

55. Having completed the initial formalities and paid his rent for the first month he and his family will then move into his room. Here too the contrast will be striking. It is fire- proof and weather-proof, and within easy reach on the same floor level there will be flush latrines, a washing space with a piped water supply, and bathrooms with cubicles into which he may take a bucket of water and have a bath, subject only to any restrictions there may be in the hours of supply-but these will be the same restrictions as apply to all other parts of the urban areas.

56. Plans of a typical seven-storey resettlement block will be found at Appendix II Drawing No. 1, and it will be noted that these blocks are in the shape of the letter H, the cross bar of which accommodates the latrines. All seven-storey resettle- ment buildings are designed and constructed by the Architectural

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