ENG-1952 — Page 33

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1952

report will be ready by April, 1953, when it will be possible to decide whether or not to go on with this development scheme.

Hong Kong lacks a suitable sports stadium for events at which very large crowds wish to attend, and a decision was taken in July to provide three million dollars for the erection of such a stadium at Sookunpoo. The stadium is intended to be built at the first stage for thirty thousand spectators, but has been designed so as to make expansion possible at a later stage to a total capacity of sixty-five thousand spectators. The arena is to provide a football and sports ground and a running track.

Two subsidized housing schemes for the poorer sections of Hong Kong's population were completed during 1952; a block of one hundred flats on land provided free by the Government at North Point, built by the Hong Kong Model Housing Society, in April, and another of two hundred and seventy flats, subsidized in part from Colonial Development and Welfare funds, at Sheung Li Uk, built by the Hong Kong Housing Society, in September. These two housing projects are regarded as pilot schemes for more ambitious plans, now under consideration in the light of the pilot experiment, for reducing the deplorable congestion which now exists in the tenements of the city. Sites for those further plans have now been reserved, and it is proposed, in 1953, to set up some form of housing authority to put the plans into effect. Among those badly affected by the acute housing shortage in the poorer sections of the community are the lower ranks of the Civil Service and in December, with the concur- rence of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, five million Hong Kong dollars were set aside for making housing loans at low rates of interest to junior civil

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