ENG-1956 — Page 30

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in conditions such as those described above allowed to develop without some remedial measures being taken? The answer to these questions is complex. In the first place, it is perhaps difficult, in the light of our present knowledge, to appreciate how imperceptibly, and yet with what astonishing rapidity, the problem matured. In two years the squatter population increased from 30,000 to at least 300,000. Once the fringes of the settlements had been occupied a virtual screen was established, behind which the density increased without apparent change, until one day huts could be seen thrusting out of the levelled area and up the ravines into the low hills with which the cities are surrounded. Perhaps 80,000 people now occupied an area which a few weeks ago seemed to contain no more than a string of roadside huts. They were, of course, essentially mobile. Their crude shacks could be dismantled in a few hours and could be transported for several miles without assistance from outside the family. They were desperate and determined people who were now accustomed to the insecurity of someone else's land, and in practice disturbance meant little to them except the search for a new site. Surveys were undertaken but they were then unskilled and the results were inaccurate and conflicting. All that was known with certainty was that a problem of frightening dimensions was building up at a frightening speed.

The Government hesitated at first to tackle this amorphous problem for two reasons. It seemed impossible to believe that this was in truth Hong Kong's problem. Hong Kong had granted immediate sanctuary to the refugees; but was not their rehabilitation and ultimate disposal a matter for some wider organization than a charitable next-door neighbour? If the responsibility was not Hong Kong's there were three ways, and only three, in which she could be relieved of it; either the refugees could return to their homeland, or they could emigrate to some other country, or the costs of their integration into Hong Kong's own community could be

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