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more encouragement should be given to private bodies. Many of the regulations are petty, based on black and white rules rather than on actual facts and on reality. For instance, I once wanted to run a school for squatter children in Nissen huts, because the children were idling away their time on bunks in dark and airless wooden huts. I was told by the Medical Officer in the Education Department that Nissen huts would be too unhealthy for children. (What would the Army say to that?) The children did not get their school and were forced to enjoy better health in their little wooden boxes. This sticking to regulations may be applicable to advanced countries like the United Kingdom (though I remember working in bad conditions there during the war) but it is a great discouragement to many who are really interested in education. The private schools do much for the children and are also used for supplying teachers to the training colleges. But nothing is done from the other side to encourage them and they often get the impression that they are trying to do something criminal. The smaller schools have enough trouble with the rent problem, and Government should control that for private schools, or subsidize their rents; why do they make matters worse by adding unreasonable and petty demands?
Parallel with my interest in education is my interest in housing. Here I am not going to be so sympathetic as I was in my remarks about education. Resettlement was a good plan, though not ideal. A lot of dangers are obviated, and for that we are thankful. But with the population increasing naturally at more than 100,000 per year, not to mention immigration, the present programme to resettle 100,000 per year does not even keep up with the natural growth in population. Here a grave responsibility rests with the Government. Land prices are raised sky-high; we worship land as if it were the golden calf. Government is also encouraging demolition of older property. These two factors are driving the middle-class people into the slums, and the poor into the streets. Our people are paying higher rents; their food is becoming dearer (as was officially admitted two days ago); school fees are rising; everything costs more; so they have to leave their houses and take temporary shelter in huts in order to live at all. The white-collar workers at the same time are being compressed into smaller and smaller spaces.
Yet, ironically enough, Government has forbidden them to build huts or live on house-tops. Thousands and thousands of people who once lived in a room in a building are now living in illegal structures in order to send their children to school, yet all the time they are haunted with the fear of a visit from the Squatter Control Department. When Government boasts of prosperity and counts its surplus, I wonder if it considers that those millions of dollars have been squeezed indirectly from the white-collar workers and labourers; I wonder if it knows of starving people passing their nights in the open on barren hillsides? Some of us have been accused of emotionalism.
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If emotionalism means concern for the poor, the homeless, let then God forbid that we should ever lose our emotionalism. Those who can sit in comfort by their fires in winter with never a thought for the unfortunates they have driven onto the streets, become cynical and play Scrooge if they will.
At the beginning of January, in the coldest weather for 60 years, a large number of people were driven from their huts in a certain area and have lived in appalling conditions ever since, having nowhere to go. The site was not required for building. They claim they have lived there for over a year, apparently unnoticed by the Squatter Control Department. Why such weather was chosen to carry out the cruel operation has not been disclosed. This is happening in many parts of Hong Kong. I have asked many who should know, where these people are supposed to live, seeing that they cannot afford to rent a room, they do not qualify for resettlement, and they are not allowed to build a hut. The brightest answer I got to the question came from one officer in the Social Welfare Department, who said they could easily rent a room, anywhere. No doubt he was thinking in terms of his own salary. I challenge this uninformed person to rent a room within the means of a person with a family earning $200 or $300 a month; even those earning twice as much find it hard to make ends meet, even living in a single room. If Government intends to continue this land policy, it will need to step up the programme for low-cost housing and resettlement to house a million people within the next two years.
If we do not have the money we must get loans. This is an emergency - an acute emergency. For the sake of the prosperity and development of our city we cannot have our middle-class people driven onto the streets; we cannot have our working people helping to keep the landlords fat but starving their own children.
On this subject I must not omit to criticize the activities of some in the Squatter Control of the Resettlement Department. It is enough for the poor to have their problems, and this Department must not add any further burdens. The practices of some are so well known that anyone who really wanted to find them out could do so quite quickly. The rights of the poor are said to be traded, and the situation is so bad that it would be better to find some new way of control altogether. It is strange that the Resettlement Department Officers complain that the people try tricks to get resettlement. I feel I could forgive a poor man for trying to cheat to get a place for his family to live in if he really needed it; but I cannot forgive the man who does not need a house himself but is willing to sell the houses that belong to the poor.
Page 28 of 194
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Page 28 of 194
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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
more encouragement should be given to private bodies. Many of the regulations are petty, based on black and white rules rather than on actual facts and on reality. For instance, I once wanted to run a school for squatter children in Nissen huts, because the children were idling away their time on bunks in dark and airless wooden huts. I was told by the Medical Officer in the Education Department that Nissen huts would be too unhealthy for children. (What would the Army say to that?) The children did not get their school and were forced to enjoy better health in their little wooden boxes. This sticking to regulations may be applicable to advanced countries like the United Kingdom (though I remember working in bad conditions there during the war) but it is a great discouragement to many who are really interested in education. The private schools do much for the children and are also used for supplying teachers to the training colleges. But nothing is done from the other side to encourage them and they often get the impression that they are trying to do something criminal. The smaller schools have enough trouble with the rent problem, and Government should control that for private schools, or subsidize their rents; why do they make matters worse by adding unreasonable and petty demands?
Parallel with my interest in education is my interest in housing. Here I am not going to be so sympathetic as I was in my remarks about education. Resettlement was a good plan, though not ideal. A lot of dangers are obviated, and for that we are thankful. But with the population increasing naturally at more than 100,000 per year, not to mention immigration, the present programme to resettle 100,000 per year does not even keep up with the natural growth in population. Here a grave responsibility rests with the Government. Land prices are raised sky-high; we worship land as if it were the golden calf. Government is also encouraging demolition of older property. These two factors are driving the middle-class people into the slums, and the poor into the streets. Our people are paying higher rents; their food is becoming dearer (as was officially admitted two days ago); school fees are rising; everything costs more; so they have to leave their houses and take temporary shelter in huts in order to live at all. The white-collar workers at the same time are being compressed into smaller and smaller spaces.
Yet, ironically enough, Government has forbidden them to build huts or live on house-tops. Thousands and thousands of people who once lived in a room in a building are now living in illegal structures in order to send their children to school, yet all the time they are haunted with the fear of a visit from the Squatter Control Department. When Government boasts of prosperity and counts its surplus, I wonder if it considers that those millions of dollars have been squeezed indirectly from the white-collar workers and labourers; I wonder if it knows of starving people passing their nights in the open on barren hillsides? Some of us have been accused of emotion-
7
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
41
alism. If emotionalism means concern for the poor, the homeless, Let then God forbid that we should ever lose our emotionalism. those who can sit in comfort by their fires in winter with never a thought for the unfortunates they have driven onto the streets, become cynical and play Scrooge if they will.
At the beginning of January, in the coldest weather for 60 years, a large number of people were driven from their huts in a certain area and have lived in appalling conditions ever since, having nowhere to go. The site was not required for building. They claim they have lived there for over a year, apparently unnoticed by the Squatter Control Department. Why such weather was chosen to carry out the cruel operation has not been disclosed. This is happening in many parts of Hong Kong. I have asked many who should know, where these people are supposed to live, seeing that they cannot afford to rent a room, they do not qualify for resettlement, and they are not allowed to build a hut. The brightest answer I got to the question came from one officer in the Social Welfare Department, who said they could easily rent a room, anywhere. No doubt he was thinking in terms of his own salary. I challenge this uninformed person to rent a room within the means of a person with a family earning $200 or $300 a month; even those earning twice as much find it hard to make ends meet, even living in a single room. If Government intends to continue this land policy, it will need to step up the programme for low-cost housing and resettlement to house a million people within the next two years.
If we do not have the money we must get loans. This
is an emergency-an acute emergency. For the sake of the prosperity and development of our city we cannot have our middle-class people driven onto the streets; we cannot have our working people helping to keep the landlords fat but starving their own children.
On this subject I must not omit to criticize the activities of some in the Squatter Control of the Resettlement Department. It is enough for the poor to have their problems, and this Department must not add any further burdens. The practices of some are so well known that anyone who really wanted to find them out could do so quite quickly. The rights of the poor are said to be traded, and the situation is so bad that it would be better to find some new way of control altogether. It is strange that the Resettlement Department Officers complain that the people try tricks to get resettlement. I feel I could forgive a poor man for trying to cheat to get a place for his family to live in if he really needed it; but I cannot forgive the man who does not need a house himself but is willing to sell the houses that belong to the poor.
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