Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1967-1968 — Page 39

blocks of both the Mark I and Mark II designs were also reserved for these purposes and allocated to suitable voluntary agencies. At present there are 43 ground floor schools in operation, run, in the same way as the rooftop schools, as co-educational vernacular primary schools under the Education Department's subsidy code. Other ground floor rooms are used as casework centres, nurseries, clinics and for many other welfare

purposes.

83. In the newer designs of resettlement block, structural limitations prevent the use of the rooftops for these purposes, 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, cach holding 24 classrooms, have been and will continue to be built to provide for the occupants 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, these facilities will mainly be accommodated in separate estate welfare buildings, of which the first is now under con- struction in Ham Tin. These welfare buildings will house a balanced variety of services, government and unofficial, planned and coordinated by the Social Welfare Department and the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, and mutual interests will be overseen by a voluntary joint manage- ment committee.

84. An example 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 population of over 49,000 people (or 8,000 families) living in 42 eight-storey blocks. This estate in the New Territories has two ground floor kindergartens, which provide 1,758 places, 9 top floor schools with 765 primary places and 6,975 subsidized primary places, a welfare centre, a nursery, a clinic, a Loans and Savings Association office and a branch clinic of the Family Planning Association. In addition to 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 Depart- ment for the benefit of the district as a whole.

85. 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

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