ENG-1975 — Page 272

HISTORY

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employment and contracts, provides for six days paid holidays each year and 24 days sick leave on half pay, and gives an entitlement to four rest days a month. In the past six years, 43 items of legislation have been enacted to improve conditions of employment. A dozen more are on the way.

The first public housing estate was built in 1953, after 50,000 squatters lost their homes in a Christmas Day fire at Shek Kip Mei. These housing blocks had only basic facilities with the intention of providing quickly a large number of homes for victims and other squatters at rents they could afford. Housing blocks have now been im- proved and standards of accommodation have been progressively raised.

A new unified Housing Authority was formed in 1973 with the responsibility of planning, building and managing all public housing estates in Hong Kong. It is served by the Housing Department--the result of amalgamating the former Resettle- ment Department and the housing division of the Urban Services Department. In the past 20 years, the government has provided homes for 1.8 million people in its 56 public housing estates, representing more than 41 per cent of Hong Kong's population. Apart from public housing, another 141,500 people enjoy subsidised housing provided by the Hong Kong Housing Society, the largest of government- aided voluntary housing societies.

Road development, including flyovers, has been remarkable. In 1967 the Lion Rock tunnel opened to provide a high-speed road link between the New Territories and urban Kowloon; a twin tunnel is now under construction. A new era in Hong Kong's internal communications came with the opening of the cross-harbour tunnel in August 1972. Built by private enterprise with government participation, it is one of the longest underwater road tunnels in Asia.

In September 1975 the government finally approved the construction of the modified initial system of the proposed mass transit underground railway. This system is estimated to cost $5,800 million and it will run for 15.6 kilometres beneath areas that are amongst the most densely populated in the world. Tunnelling has already started and the railway is expected to be fully operative by 1980.

Early History

Investigation has shown that people have lived in Hong Kong from primitive times, but population was sparse up to the 19th century. Small villages maintained themselves by fishing, by cultivation of the scanty soil available, and by casual preying on coastal shipping. The fishing ports of Shau Kei Wan and Shek Pai Wan (Aberdeen) were noted as the haunts of pirates from the time of the Mongol Dynasty.

The Kwangtung area of the Chinese mainland was first brought under the suzerainty of China between 221 and 214 BC, but even after its conquest by the Han Emperor Wu Ti in 111 BC, it remained for some centuries a frontier area. The Lei Cheng Uk Tomb, which was discovered in Kowloon in 1955, probably dates from before the Tang Dynasty (620-907) and is evidence of Chinese penetration, although Chinese migration on a large scale did not come until the Sung Dynasty (960–1279). The oldest villages in the New Territories, those belonging to the Tang Clan, have a