Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1970-1971 — Page 11

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12. The Select Committees met 34 times during the year. Members asked 50 questions about resettlement at full council meetings, and the department received some 1,298 letters on behalf of over 320 members of the public. The Joint Appeals Sub-Committee of the Resettlement Policy and Resettlement Management Select Committees met 20 times to consider 29 appeals made against decisions by the Resettlement Department.

CHAPTER 3

SQUATTER CONTROL

13. The Squatter Control Sub-Division of the Operation Division is responsible primarily for preventing the erection of new structures or extensions to tolerated structures (as defined in paragraph 17) on Crown land, leased land and the rooftops and kitchen rooftops of private residential, commercial and industrial premises within the urban area and in the Tsuen Wan District of the New Territories. It also has other subsidiary duties which are mentioned below. The District Commis- sioner, New Territories, is responsible for squatter control in the New Territories outside Tsuen Wan, although he is assisted in this by Resettlement Officers and Assistant Resettlement Officers seconded from the Resettlement Department for squatter control duties in the other districts.

14. For squatter control purposes, the area of the department's responsibilities is divided into four districts (Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, Kwun Tong and Tsuen Wan), each of which is under the charge of a Resettlement Officer and is divided into two sections with an Assistant Resettlement Officer in charge of each. Sections are sub- divided into patrol areas which are the responsibility of Resettlement Assistants and their supporting staff of gangers and labourers. The Resettlement Assistant is required to know his patrol area intimately, no easy task when an area may contain from 1,500 to 2,000 structures and between 6,000 and 15,000 people, and covers anything up to 3,000 acres of hilly ground.

15. The function of the patrolling Resettlement Assistant is basically to see that his area remains 'frozen', this is, that no unauthorized new building takes place. Structures which are presumed to have been erected before August 1954 or which have since been expressly 'tolorated' following subsequent surveys, the last of which was in 1964, are specially marked and records are kept of them. Tolerated structures, as the name

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