Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1964-1965 — Page 17

(ii) Target Date for Clearance

28. Private land must be resumed, permit areas cancelled, petitions answered and all compensation paid before the land is cleared. It is therefore necessary to ensure that development can start as soon as possible after clearance and demolition of the structures to avoid letting the land lie idle and to prevent further squatting.

(iii) Availability of Accommodation

29. Constant liaison with the Architectural Office of the Public Works Department ensures awareness of the numbers, capacity and completion dates of resettlement blocks under construction or being planned. To ease the economic burden on the people affected and the traffic load on the Colony's already crowded transport services, people are moved to the nearest available estate. Resettlement factory accom- modation must also be available at the time that factories are cleared.

(iv) Cultivation

30. When this is involved, it is necessary to determine how long it will take to produce a large-scale survey plan, identify crops and pay compensation. The two latter processes involve liaison with other Government departments. In addition to compensation, farmers or sub- stantial pigbreeders are eligible for shops in estates so that they may have an alternative form of livelihood. However, the great majority of available shops are allocated as a first priority to shopkeepers who have been cleared, and as a result there are long waiting lists of cultivators and pigbreeders for shops in Hong Kong and Kowloon resettlement estates. Much thought has been given to resolving this problem, and by the end of the year a decision was about to be taken on a new policy abrogating shop entitlement for future clearances of pigbreeders and cultivators and offering monetary compensation instead.

(v) Manpower

31. Screening, investigation and arranging the orderly resettlement of residents, shops and factories, all take time, so the programme must be planned to avoid wastage of manpower. It is not unusual for staff of the sub-division to be engaged in between 40 to 50 clearance areas at any one time.

(vi) Interdependence of Clearances

32. It is sometimes found that, because of the configuration of the ground or the need for ancillary work on roads, drains and services for

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