tors for the demolition value of the materials; and within a few days of the move the clearance area will have been freed for permanent development.
20. In many clearances areas of cultivation surround the squatter huts, and for the cultivators clearance means the loss of their existing livelihood. The shortage of land in the Colony is so acute that no alter- native land suitable for cultivation can normally be offered to persons involved in these clearances.
21. If such land has been leased from the Crown it has first to be resumed under the Crown Lands Resumption Ordinance, and the former owner is legally entitled to the full market value of the land as assessed by a Compensation Board, one member of which may be nominated by the former lessees, and to which any former lessee may make personal representation. In addition, the former lessee, or his legal tenant, is entitled to compensation for crops. If the land is only held on a tem- porary permit, or if it is Crown Land cultivated without a permit, the cultivator is not legally entitled to any compensation. In October 1954, however, it was decided that crop compensation should also be payable, as an ex-gratia measure, to illegal cultivators because of the impossi- bility of their finding other land to cultivate. In April 1957, it was decided to pay an additional special ex-gratia allowance, the amount of which depends on the length of time the cultivator has been in occupation and the area of land cultivated.
22. 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 Agriculture and Forestry Department and the amount of crop compensation, based on current market prices, is assessed. To the value of crops is added the special ex-gratia allowance for land disturbance: sixty cents per square foot is paid to a cultivator for land which he has been cultivating since before the Japanese occupa- tion in 1941, and ten cents per square foot for land opened thereafter and before October 1954. (For land opened up after this date no com- pensation is payable.) Compensation is determined after the cultivator has been interviewed at the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs. It is the usual practice to pay the ex-gratia compensation one week before the land is required. Where both squatters and cultivation are being cleared, the two operations must be planned to coincide.
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