Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1966-1967 — Page 54

CHAPTER 7

RESETTLEMENT FACTORIES

113. In the early days of resettlement, most areas cleared for re- development contained only domestic huts, shops and cottage industries. There was no special provision for the occasional factory that might be encountered, nor for workshops, though some of the latter were accom- modated in ground floor rooms in the domestic resettlement blocks and, with certain limitations, persons engaged in cottage industries were permitted to carry on work in their domestic rooms. But in time clear- ance areas, especially those previously occupied under permits issued by the Crown Lands and Survey Office of the Public Works Department, began to include larger industrial concerns with heavier machinery. It therefore became necessary to provide resettlement factories in order to facilitate clearances involving people whose undertakings could not be housed in the ground floor workshops of domestic estates but who clearly required alternative accommodation.

114. Since 1957 one single-storey and twenty-one multi-storey factory blocks have been built, comprising 7,869 units, with about 1.9 million square feet of working space. On 31st March 5,346 of these units were occupied by 1,662 individual concerns, an increase of 254 businesses during the year. 2,523 units remained unoccupied at the end of the year. The reasons for the slow progress in filling empty units have already been given in paragraph 16; added to these an exceptionally large num- ber of resettlement factory units were completed during the year, thus widening the usual gap between the completion and filling of accom- modation.

115. Some 78 different types of manufacture are represented in reset- tlement factories, a microcosm of Hong Kong's light industries. The commonest trades are metalwork, plastics, woodwork, weaving and printing, and over 9,300 workers are employed, many of them from the neighbouring domestic resettlement estates. Particulars are given at Appendix 6. Once established, factories are regularly inspected by officers of the Labour and Fire Services Departments, and also by the Commerce & Industry Department when Certificates of Origin and Commonwealth Preference Certificates are required for exporting.

116. The older factory buildings, which have five floors, are similar in appearance to a domestic 'H' block, though the new ones with seven storeys are all built to an 'I' pattern. In the 'H' blocks, cach bay accom-

44