Cottage Area and 48 street lights in Rennie's Mill Village, recondi- tioned the public lighting in 22 Mark I and Mark II blocks, and modified the public lighting system in all Mark III, IV and V blocks in all restaurant estates to provide partial day lighting in central corridors and reconditioned the electrical installations in eight ground floor schools in Jordan Valley Estate and Kwung Tong Estate.
95. 375 major and 1,502 minor repairs or improvement jobs were carried out by the section during the year, at a cost of $689,830.
CHAPTER 9
FINANCE
96. Settlers in cottage areas pay quarterly permit fees for the sites they occupy. The amount is laid down in the Resettlement Regulations, and varies according to the size of the site and the location of the area; for a typical site of 160 square feet the permit fee is $5 a quarter in outlying areas and $15 a quarter in the more central areas. If the permittee does not own the premises he is living in he also pays rent either to the Government or to a welfare agency. Rents for Government- owned cottages are $10 or $15 a month according to location.
97. The Government's policy in fixing rents in domestic estates is to recover the original capital cost (including an assumed figure of $14 per square foot for land including site formation, piling and engineer- ing cost, but excluding land to be occupied by schools, playgrounds, roads etc.), amortized over 40 years at a rate of 34% compound interest a year, plus all annually recurrent expenditure, including the cost of administration and maintenance. Rents are worked out in respect of a particular Mark of block, on the basis of contract prices for the earliest ones to be constructed, and apply to all blocks of that Mark irrespective of location and date of construction. They are liable to revision from time to time to meet rising costs of maintenance and management. Except where the ratable value of the accommodation is below the minimum at which rates are charged, there is an additional element for rates which is collected with the rent. This amounts to about 17% of the ratable value in urban areas and 11% in the New Territories. A further charge is made for water, varying according to the size of the room, in those premises where individual meters have not been installed. Rents in Mark I and II blocks, which were worked out in
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