ENG-1954 — Page 171

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1954

emergency of the first order; and second, the fires freed for proper development substantial areas of valuable land which the presence of squatters had rendered unusable and whose removal had defied all ingenuity.

Early in the year an emergency sub-committee of the Urban Council was appointed, under the chairman- ship of Col. J. D. Clague, an unofficial member, to advise what measures should be adopted to meet this new situation. All the recommendations of the sub- committee were later accepted and formed the basic plan for resettlement operations undertaken during 1954. These recommendations represented an abrupt departure from previous policy. The two main recommendations were that, as land was short, it would be necessary to resettle squatters in permanent multi-storey buildings; and, that since this undertaking would not attract sufficient private capital the construction should be undertaken directly by Government and financed from public funds. The same sub-committee recommended a reorganization of the administrative arrangements for squatter clearance and resettlement, and this was put into effect in the spring when a temporary Department of Resettlement was set up under a Commissioner for Resettlement, to be responsible for all matters connected with the prevention of illegal building and the clearance and resettlement of squatters.

The acceptance of the new principles involved the Government in the novel and interesting experiment of constructing vast emergency housing estates in which some of the poorest inhabitants, many of whom had in the past barely felt the impact of the administration, became the direct tenants of the Government. Once the decision to construct the emergency houses had

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