Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1966-1967 — Page 33

MARINE DEPARTMENT LIBRARY

educational and welfare activities in the various areas. At the time of writing this report, the 14 cottage areas had between them 34 schools with primary places for 17,440 pupils, 21 small welfare centres, 16 clinics, and 4 boys' and girls' clubs. There are kaifong or district welfare associations functioning in Chai Wan, Mount Davis, Lai Chi Kok, Tai Hang Sai, Ngau Tau Kok, Ho Man Tin/King's Park and So Kon Po. These associations are working in increasingly close co-operation with the Resettlement Department which is now responsible for maintaining Government's liaison with them.

CHAPTER 6

RESETTLEMENT ESTATES

THE BEGINNINGS OF MULTI-STOREY RESETTLEMENT

70. The origins of multi-storey resettlement in the disastrous squatter fire which occurred at Shek Kip Mei on Christmas Day 1953 and the formation of the Resettlement Department early in the following year, have been outlined in the first chapter. Thirteen years later, at the end of March 1967, most of the 933,697 people living in accommodation administered by the Resettlement Department are housed in multi-storey estates, mainly in urban Kowloon, but also in two districts on the south side of Hong Kong Island, and at Tsuen Wan, Kwai Chung and Yuen Long in the New Territories. As a first stage in rehousing the victims from Shek Kip Mei, the Public Works Department erected two and three-storey temporary buildings known as 'Bowring Bungalows' (named after the then Director of Public Works) on the site of the fire. Mean- while the architects planned and built taller buildings, completing eight of the original six-storey blocks on the same site before the end of 1954. During that summer the department was busily engaged in clearing fire lanes through some of the largest concentrations of squatter shacks. The programme included a major operation at Tai Hang Tung during August, but shortly before it could be carried out the whole area was destroyed by a fire in which some 24,000 people lost their homes. A second estate quickly began to grow on this site, and it was here that the break-through occurred, for the Tai Hang Tung fire had freed a level area on which some 35% more people than had previously lived there could quickly be rehoused, so that the margin of accommodation necessary for the start of a long-term programme became available.

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