cases of discord were quickly ironed out by the officer on duty. More serious cases, and especially those requiring protracted arbitration, were taken by the New Territories District Officers or in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs; the latter handled 1,456 of these cases during 1949. Finally, the judiciary provided expert machinery both for conciliation, the bulk of which was carried out in the magistrates' chambers, and for the settlement of disputes by litigation.
Squatters
The Social Welfare Office carried out a preliminary screening of all the inhabitants of squatter colonies scheduled for clearance, and recommended to the Urban Council those families which qualified for admission to one of the new approved squatter sites. In the course of this work a very large amount of social and economic information about squatters was collected and recorded. As the work was not started until towards the end of the first quarter, statistics have been summarised only from the July-December returns. Squatter screening squads during this period visited 3,085 shacks and interviewed 5,027 squatter families consisting of 15,892 persons; 1,565 of these families had been in Hong Kong for ten or more years, but over 90% of all squatters originally came from Kwangtung Province. Only 275 of the families were eligible for recommendation to the Urban Council for an approved site. Both economically and socially there are very great differences between one squatter colony and another; some consist almost solely of brothels or opium dens; some are flourishing trading centres dealing in reputable wares; some are inhabited only by Chiuchow- speaking immigrants from Swatow; some have a very high proportion of bread-winnners in regular, legal and well-paid employment; some consist of nothing but matting roofs two or three feet off the ground which cannot even be called shacks. Not a few government employees from nearly all departments, school-teachers, employees of big public utilities, and others who may be earning total incomes of $300 a month or more have been found amongst the squatters. Other investigations of squatter families made by the squatter- screening squad for special reasons, or after a fire, gave the same picture.
Youth Work
No social welfare activity is more important or more lasting in results than that collectively described as youth work. Although in this work it is impossible to establish any boundary dividing educational from social welfare activities, this section deals only with the progress made outside the schools and the University.
In some other parts of the world youth work or youth welfare describes activities undertaken for or by adolescents
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