Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1966-1967 — Page 44

rooftop schools as co-educational vernacular primary schools, and under the Education Department's subsidy code. Other ground floor rooms are used as casework centres, nurseries, clinics and for many other welfare purposes.

88. In the newer designs of resettlement block, structural limitations prevent the use of the rooftops for the same purposes as in the past, and in the Mark IV and V estates it is also impossible to have schools on the ground floors. Specially modified top floor accommodation has therefore been provided for schools in a number of the Mark III blocks, and six- storey annexes or free-standing school buildings, each holding 24 class- rooms, have been and will continue to be built beside many of the Mark IV and V blocks. A number of ground floors are in use as schools and for welfare activities in the Mark III estates, but in the Mark IV estates, although some ground floor rooms are available for welfare activities. which require little space, reliance will principally be placed on separate estate welfare buildings, of which the first is to be built in Ham Tin during the coming year. These welfare buildings will house a balanced variety of services, government and unofficial, planned and co-ordinated by the Social Welfare Department and the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, and mutual interests will be overseen by a voluntary joint management committee.

89. An indication of the quantity and variety of educational and welfare facilities available may be found in Kwai Chung, a Mark III estate which was completed in June 1965 and has an authorized popula- tion of over 48,000 people (or 8,000 families) living in 42 eight-storey blocks. This estate in the New Territories has two ground floor schools, which provide 2,250 primary places, 9 top floor schools with 630 primary places and 6,750 subsidised primary places, a welfare centre, a nursery, a clinic, a Loans and Savings Association office and a branch clinic of the Family Planning Association. Apart from all these facilities which are run by non-profit-making voluntary bodies, there is close by in Tsuen Wan the Princess Alexandra Community Centre which is run by the Social Welfare Department for the benefit of the district as a whole.

90. Some of the welfare work in the estates, as elsewhere in the Colony, is in the hands of religious and other bodies whose parent organizations are overseas. But there are many others of a purely local origin, and all the agencies rely heavily on workers recruited in Hong Kong. A welcome sign of a growing awareness of the value of self-help among the residents lies in the growth in the number of Kaifong Welfare

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