Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1966-1967 — Page 53

of the six priorities for resettlement listed in the White Paper (mentioned in paragraph 8). The programme is nevertheless reviewed annually, and the figures may well increase in the future. During the year, 16,782 people moved into larger rooms compared with 18,972 in 1965-66. The worst overcrowding is naturally found in the older estates where rooms rarely fall vacant and where many families whose density has dropped even below 16 square feet per adult refuse to accept offers of larger rooms in the new estates. They prefer to tolerate discomfort rather than be cut off from their friends or change their place of work and the schools which their children attend.

112. The cleansing of the public parts of domestic blocks, court- yards and open ground, surface drains and banks has always been a heavy task for the labour force now numbering some 2,400, particularly in the old Mark I and II estates. The design of these blocks is not con- ducive to the orderly disposal of rubblish, and although sanitation com- panies will contract to remove and empty individual tenants' dustbins for a very small fee, many tenants neither employ them nor are willing to carry their own rubbish down several flights of stairs to the refuse collection points. The open-sided balconies, on the other hand, are a constant temptation to throw waste paper and refuse over the side, there to be swept up by the department's sanitation labourers. During the year, some improvement was noted in three of the old estates where a free door-to-door collection service was introduced as an experiment, and this is being extended. The problem is not so serious in the Mark III and IV estates where there are refuse chutes with openings on every floor, and where the wire grilles which tenants install on their private balconies discourage the anti-social habits prevalent in the older estates. During 1965-66 the department tried the experiment of letting out the cleansing of Lo Fu Ngam and Sau Mau Ping to contract. It was hoped that this would improve the sanitary conditions and reduce the cost of cleansing. Unhappily the contractor over-stretched himself and found himself unable to recruit and supervise an adequate body of men. It also proved a mistake to have included Lo Fu Ngam where the blocks are all of the Mark I and II design. The experiment was a failure and the contract was terminated after 12 days. However, in March 1967 a second contract was let for cleansing a new Mark IV estate at Shek Pai Wan, and if the service there continues to be as satisfactory and economical as it has so far promised, contract cleansing will certainly be extended to other new estates.

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