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can get it) to his place of work, and the children's education is com- pletely disrupted.

I feel strongly, Mr. Chairman, that Government is not doing the right thing in deciding to leave it only to the voluntary agencies, with their limited resources, to provide schools, hospitals and social services in these Licensed Areas. When poor families move out there, they will remain there for a very, very long time. And it is precisely because these families represent the lowest income group of the community that Government should be responsible for their welfare. However, since the motion before Council is really not a debate on the White Paper, I shall refrain from elaborating further until a more suitable occasion. In any case, Mr. Chairman, all is not lost! Government has been sensible enough to do an about-face and to recognize belatedly the need for a scheme, which it is now embarking on, to advance to des- titute tenants from dangerous buildings up to 50% of the compensation they would eventually receive from the landlord. I congratulate the Government on its remarkable flexibility.

On this note, I beg to move.

MR. CHEUNG WING-IN :-Mr. Chairman, an ever-increasing num- ber of old houses are being torn down to give way to new multi-storey blocks. A large number of the evicted tenants are unable to pay for accommodation provided by private enterprise. The need of these tenants for low-cost and resettlement housing has become ever more urgent and pressing and has been carefully considered by the Working Party and by Government. The recent amendments to the Buildings Ordinance intended to encourage landowners to come together and put up larger and better schemes will doubtless accelerate the rate at which old buildings are coming down and increase the number of displaced

tenants.

Now every application for a demolition or piling permit would entail an inspection by Public Works Department surveyors of the neighbouring houses to see if they would be rendered dangerous by the work to be undertaken. The result of these inspections will be an unprecedented number of condemned buildings, many of which can be expected to stand for many more years were there no inspection or no re-development schemes in the immediate neighbourhood. The closure of these buildings and the unnecessarily short notice given would help the developers to speed up their building scheme, but are causing untold hardship and complete disruption to the life of the tenants. I say the notice given is unnecessarily short because what- ever the condition of these buildings, they must have been so for many weeks and months, if not years, and two or three weeks' time so badly needed by the tenants would not make an appreciable difference to the risk.

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I welcome Government's decision to give resettlement priority to such displaced tenants, but I must say that the charge for an advance deposit of $400 per head is prohibitive and this amounts to no relief. If our resettlement programme is stepped up making many more units available, I am confident that Government may be persuaded to forego the "key money" or at least to reduce the amount considerably.

With these remarks, I beg to second my friend's motion that our resettlement programme be stepped up.

MR. B. A. BERNACCHI :-Mr. Chairman, I dare to query whether this motion is a counter-blast to my motion, of which the proposer has had notice for quite a while. I find it hard to understand this motion. I think the present delay is primarily as a result of movements of a subsoil in Chai Wan new resettlement buildings preventing them from being occupied. Recent typhoons, if they produce a delay, will only be felt in a year's or more time. Without further clarification I cannot vote on this motion. Surely, the motion in its present form, goes away from the Urban Council recommendation of 150,000 people to be re- settled per year.

I support this recommendation and not the lesser figure of 120,000.

COMMISSIONER FOR RESETTLEMENT:--Mr. Chairman, Mr. CHEONG- LEEN has said that this is not a debate on the White Paper, and I do not intend to debate the decisions which have been made by the accept- ance of the White Paper in Legislative Council. I must, however, correct some misapprehensions which Mr. CHEONG-LEEN evidently entertains.

First, with regard to dangerous buildings. No one will deny the serious and grievous problems which confront the tenants of buildings which are declared dangerous. But it is possible to exaggerate the effect which these problems have on the resettlement programme. Mr. CHEONG-LEEN mentioned the Secretary for Chinese Affairs' figure of 11,710 persons who lost their homes in April and May this year. Now the Resettlement Department has been offering resites to any of these people who have no alternative accommodation of their own, and in the same two months we have had to resite only 2,975 people. There is, of course, a time-lag between the date on which a building is de- clared dangerous and that on which these people are resited, but the figures are an indication that not all the tenants of dangerous build- ings become clients of the Resettlement Department. During June to September we resited a further 10,080 people from dangerous buildings, and these two figures together mean that we are dealing with an annual rate of 28,000. This is rather different from the 40,000 to 60,000 suggested by Mr. CHEONG-LEEN, and one would expect the numbers to go down in the dry months.

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