Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1948-1954 — Page 41

79. An account of the Kaifong movement in post-war Hong Kong would not be complete without a tribute being paid here to the Welfare Advancement Associations for the way in which they behaved after the disastrous Shekkipmei Fire on Christmas Day 1953. Bringing relief in cash and in kind to nearly 60,000 people was a formidable task, but the Kaifong associations rose to the occasion, and the Shekkipmei Six Villages Emergency Relief Committee under the devoted Chairmanship of Mr. Parkin Wong, O.B.E., collected and distributed some two million dollars in cash to the fire victims, as well as vast quantities of relief in kind donated by a generous public. This emergency showed in the clearest way that readiness to cooperate both amongst themselves and with others which is one of the outstanding characteristics of Hong Kong's Kaifong Welfare Advancement Associations.

CHAPTER XVII

OFFICIAL AND VOLUNTARY CO-ORDINATION

80. At the end of 1947 Government appointed an official Social Welfare Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, and with eleven other mem- bers. During the next four years it was found that, with the rapid expansion of the Social Welfare Office's work, and with the number of very diverse and often technical problems with which that department was faced, this official advisory com- mittee needed to be reorganized. The matter was considered by the Secretary of State's Social Welfare Advisory Committee late in 1951, and the reorganization was carried out in the autumn of 1952. In the reorganized Social Welfare Advisory Committee the Social Welfare Officer is the Chairman, and the only official member. All the other members (up to a maximum of fifteen) are unofficials appointed either on their personal knowledge and experience of welfare work, or as representatives of prominent welfare organizations. This strengthened com- mittee has worked extremely hard, and has set up specialized sub-committees to study and report to Government on the

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