ENG-1972 — Page 21

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REVIEW

The new housing target is to give every inhabitant of Hong Kong self-contained accommodation in a reasonable environment within 10 years. In cold figures this means that the government plans to build new housing for 1.8 million people at a cost of $3,340 million. It also means new towns, new roads to link them with the old urban areas, and a full ration of the essentials of modern life: schools, medical facilities, parks, playgrounds, services and markets.

In education, all branches of learning are to be expanded, but the main thrust will be in secondary and technical education with more facilities in the tertiary field.

Social welfare in Hong Kong has long ceased to be regarded as an emergency operation. Public assistance has been overhauled and modernised and cash rather than rations is given to those in need.

New proposals to breathe new life into the social welfare system include a five- year plan for expanded services and a hefty increase in trained professionals to carry them out..

Housing for All

There is no field in which Hong Kong's pressure of people has produced more acute problems or one in which the government has responded more vigorously than housing.

Since the first resettlement blocks rose phoenix-like from the ashes of the great squatter fire of 1953 which made 53,000 homeless, more than 1.6 million people have been housed in government built low-rent estates.

The early resettlement blocks were rudimentary. But they offered security and a real home to people who until then had lived in cardboard and corrugated iron shacks, with no protection from flood and fire.

Those first concrete blocks represented a brave start to solving a massive problem. From those beginnings better things evolved. Year by year designs improved, offering more room per family, better facilities and more pleasant surroundings.

The new estates are fine examples of how Hong Kong has coped with housing people at densities higher than anywhere else on earth.

Today the rash of squatter huts that used to disfigure the hillsides has diminished. Many of the ageing and dilapidated pre-war tenement houses have been replaced by private development.

But in spite of all this, problems remain. There are still more than a quarter of a million squatters and many rooms in the earlier resettlement estates are badly crowded. In the private sector, over 300,000 people are living in unsatisfactory con- ditions in shared flats or tenements.

The scarcity of housing and living space and the harsh realities that result are major sources of friction and unhappiness. Children who have grown up in these