Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1958-1959 — Page 17

are also offered a ground floor room in which to open a shop or to start some other new line of business.

36. The first step in carrying out a cultivation clearance is to make an accurate plan, on the scale of twenty feet to the inch, showing the boundaries and exact areas of each cultivated plot. When this has been completed by the Department's Works Section the crops on the ground are identified by an officer of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the amount of crop compensation, based on the cur- rent market price of the various crops is assessed. To the value of crops is added the special ex-gratia allowance for land disturbance varying from five cents to sixty cents per square foot, depending on the length of time the cultivator or his family has occupied the land. This is determined after the cultivator has been interviewed at the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs. It is the usual practice to pay the ex-gratia com- pensation one week before the land is required. Where both squatters and cultivation are being cleared the two operations must be planned to coincide.

37. Most of the clearances undertaken during the year were to free land required for resettlement schemes. These clearances are given priority as the new estates will in turn provide accommodation to enable other clearances to be carried out to release sites for new housing, schools, factories, welfare centres, parks and playgrounds, and road, drainage, port works and waterworks schemes.

38. Sites for three new resettlement estates were cleared during the year. The first of these was at Jordan Valley, Ngau Tau Kok, which will provide accommodation for 15,000 persons, and will in addition include a resettlement factory block for the re-establishment of small factories and workshops cleared from squatter areas. The second was at Kwun Tong, in a valley to the north east of the new reclamation for industrial development; when completed this estate will provide accommodation for 56,000 persons. The third is at Chai Wan and is the first resettlement estate on Hong Kong Island. This estate will greatly facilitate squatter clearances on the Island, as up to now the squatters cleared have had to be taken across the harbour by ferry and resettled in one of the estates in Kowloon. It will provide accommoda- tion for 22,500 persons and it will also contain two resettlement factory blocks. All three clearances included large areas of cultivated land.

39. The clearances for Kwun Tong Estate were undertaken in six phases. Of the 41.15 acres of land cleared, 22.09 acres were under cultivation for which ex-gratia compensation amounting to $784,565.39

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