Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1961-1962 — Page 30

units of 198 square feet. In addition there was one single storey annexe designed to help to meet the demand for additional ground floor space; this annexe has 50 units of 168 square feet each. A total of 507 factories and workshops had been resettled in these factories. Four further fac- tories are to be built in Kowloon in the near future and the construction of one of these had started. An additional factory block specially designed to house squatter silk weaving factories in the area was under construction at Tsuen Wan,

(a) Cottage Areas

CHAPTER VIII

FINANCE

83. Site permit fees in cottage areas were fixed in 1952 at a low arbitrary figure. They were increased on the 1st April, 1956, and the revenue from permit fees as well as rents for Government-owned cottages now covers about two-thirds of the annually recurrent costs, but does not provide for the recovery of any part of the original capital expendi- ture on the areas. On 31st March, 1962, 2,974 cottages were owned by Government; of these 437 were built or purchased by Government, and the remainder were gifts from the voluntary agencies which had built them. These cottages are maintained by the Department and rented to settlers at $10 or $15 a month, according to the site of the cottage.

(b) Resettlement Estates

84. The rent for a standard room of 120 square feet in the resettle- ment estates was fixed at $14 a month in 1954, when the first multi- storey buildings were under construction. This figure was calculated to cover all annually recurrent costs and to provide for the recovery in forty years, with compound interest at 34% p.a., of the original capital cost, including land at half the upset price.

85. The cost of construction, including site formation and piling, of a seven-storey block containing 432 rooms, each of 120 square feet, was then $780,000 or about $1,806 a room, and to this figure was added the sum of $230,000 for a site of 23,000 square feet, and $15,600 for supervision by the Public Works Department (2% of the cost of con- struction) making a total of $1,025,600 or $2,375 a room. On the basis of these figures and on the assumption that annually recurrent costs would amount to $17,200 for each block, the rent for each room was assessed at $13 a month, to which $1 a month was added for water.

20

Page 30Page 31