ENG-1951 — Page 13

agreed to provide nine acres of land on this new reclamation, which will be in the heart of the city, and build a City Hall there at an estimated cost of £1,000,000. The reclamation itself will cost £350,000 and is expected to be completed in 1955.

The shortage of land in the urban areas suitable for playing fields was the main reason for the other large reclamation scheme, in Causeway Bay. This scheme involves filling in the existing typhoon shelter and building a new breakwater to enclose a new typhoon shelter to seaward of the area to be reclaimed. It will provide 54 acres of land at a cost of nearly £1 million, towards which the Hong Kong Jockey Club has made a generous donation of £155,000 on condition that the area will always be an open space. The lay-out has been planned by a committee under the chairmanship of Mr. D. Benson.

The new central Government offices, covering an area stretching from Garden Road westwards to include the site of the present Colonial Secretariat, will house most of the Government departments, many

of which are now occupying rented offices in various parts of the town. They have been designed by the Public Works Department and are to be built in three sections at a total cost of £700,000. The first section will be completed at the end of 1952, the last in 1955.

After many years of consideration and delay due to various causes the long-projected reservoir at Tai Lam Chung, between Tsun Wan and Castle Peak, is to be constructed.

The urgent need for this further reservoir is shown by the fact that for the last three months of 1951 the supply of water has had to be restricted to 5 hours per day, a restriction which will have to continue until the rains start in May 1952. When completed, in 1956, this reservoir will provide storage for an additional 1,150 million gallons, an increase of nearly 20% on the existing storage capacity of the Colony's reservoirs. The site chosen is about 18 miles from the Kowloon urban area and the total cost will be not less than £2 million.

Hospitals and Schools

The Secretary of State for the Colonies mentioned in his speech mentioned above that the Colony's medical and educational services were being taxed to the extreme by the doubling of the population which has taken place in the last three years, and commented favourably on the efforts the Government has made to deal with this difficult situation. Medical staff in the hospitals has been seriously overworked and as an emergency measure the Medical Department has allowed doctors to practise in the Colony whose degrees are not generally recognized in British territories, a proviso being that such doctors must be directly employed by the department. Having more doctors at its

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