Chapter 362: Eliminating the Slums (Part 4)
In mid-November, after another group of pioneers moved to the new town in the south, the new town's reception capacity reached its limit.
After all, the basic base of the new town is only the more than 4,000 refugees who moved there in the first half of the year; almost every family of the pioneers in the first phase has sent people to help settle the new immigrants, men, women, old and young. If the Dutata City Hall continues to add to their burden, it would be a bit inhumane.
Fortunately, Xinzhen is not the only place that can be used for diversion and resettlement. There are other places to be taken advantage of...
Including Ezekiel's family, all the manors, farms, forests and lands owned by the four noble families who were captured on the day of the siege were confiscated by the city hall.
How rich are these four noble families who have made their fortunes from buying and selling human beings for many years?
The land alone is more than 800,000 mu, which is about 60,000 hectares...
Excluding the "paper assets" in the south, west and north, the land in the central and east alone amounts to more than 20,000 hectares.
Such a huge amount of land was divided up as private property by just four noble families. A large amount of good land was used to raise horses, build holiday estates, and form private hunting grounds. How could the life of the lower class people in Adler not be miserable!
Zhao Zhenzhen, the Undead Archon who was "transferred" from Innadri, looked down upon this practice of wasting land. While the Logistics Department was busy sending the pioneers to the south, the officers and clerks of the Civil Affairs Department, along with the 400 contract workers from Innadri and the 5,000 contract workers recruited from Dutata City, vigorously carried out a land transformation campaign of flattening hunting grounds, demolishing holiday estates, and converting horse farms into farms...
The Adler Territory does not need privately owned vacation estates, hunting grounds that are only for the enjoyment of the nobles in the autumn, and horse farms that occupy large amounts of arable land in order to raise so-called precious horses.
While carrying out land transformation, Zhao Zhenzhen was also working on clearing out the local nobles. It was not practical to capture them all and hang them on street lamps one by one, but slaves obtained through illegal means must be returned to the City Hall and restored to free citizenship after verification and registration by the Civil Affairs Department. If the victims of the land seized by force come forward, it must also be returned.
These two ruthless moves would undoubtedly cause great losses to the nobles of Dutata City. Several families stood out in opposition... Then there were many new inmates in the prisoner camps and prisons, and the land reconstruction presided over by the Civil Affairs Department also generated a lot of new land for reconstruction.
After a piece of land was transformed, some people were selected from the slum dwellers and the rescued slaves to move there; although the speed of digestion was not as fast as that of the new town, it was also very stable and gradually diverted the huge slum population...
That day, Billy, who had become a "left-behind child" after his father, older brother and younger sister left, packed up his remaining personal belongings in the shed, took a reluctant look at the wooden house where he had lived for twenty years, and left the alley where he grew up without looking back.
"Billy, are you going to register with the Municipal Construction Department?"
As soon as he returned to the contract workers' dormitory and put down his luggage, the person living in the bed next to him asked Billy curiously.
"Well, I planned to sign up from the beginning. I wanted to go to the Road Construction Bureau." Billy nodded.
There are several dormitories for contract workers. Billy currently lives in the dormitory building in Six Corners Alley...right next to the small building that Coulson O'Neill owned before he became rich.
Several noble families in the central city were liquidated, and many private apartment buildings in the southern city were also reclaimed by the city hall...
The environment of this apartment building is not very good, with no gas pipelines and no electricity, but at least it is a neat and tidy suite with a separate toilet and kitchen. It is also classified as low-rent housing by the city hall. During the winter celebration, it will be registered in the special property file for people who are eligible for low-rent housing to draw.
Before the lottery for allocating low-rent housing begins, some apartment buildings are temporarily used as dormitories for contract workers.
There are four roommates in the room where Billy lives now. Two of them signed up to work in the Land Administration Bureau of the Civil Affairs Department and followed the large army to flatten the hunting ground. Only Billy and another roommate are left.
"The Road Construction Bureau... I always feel like it's going to be very hard work." My roommate stretched and lazily lay back on the bed. "Why don't you come with me to the Public Security Bureau? If you can't be an agent, you can be a militiaman. Isn't being a militiaman much easier than building roads?"
This roommate's situation was similar to Billy's. His family members were all thinking about reclaiming land and owning land, so they followed the arrangement of the Logistics Department and left, leaving him alone in the city.
But what is slightly different from Billy is that he chose to stay not because he longed for great development in City Hall, but simply because he did not want to go through the pain of pioneering new land.
"Do you think being a militiaman has it easy? They have to attend training regularly and perform missions outside for a long time. Look at the Innadeli militia who came to our place. They are patrolling outside every day. When we get home from work, they are still patrolling. It's not as easy as you think." Billy didn't like this lazy guy very much and said unhappily.
"What's so hard about patrolling? It's obviously very glorious." The roommate seemed not to hear Billy's unhappiness and said proudly, "Wearing that straight and handsome uniform, carrying a weapon, everyone has to avoid you when you walk on the street. Isn't it more comfortable than doing the hard work of repairing the road?"
Billy shook his head, too lazy to argue with this guy about this: "I'm going to attend the night class, do you want to go?"
"No, no, there are too many mosquitoes outside." My roommate waved his hand lazily.
"You don't even want to attend the night class, and you want to be a militiaman!" Billy angrily left the dormitory alone.
When going downstairs, Billy met people from other rooms who were going to class together. After chatting with them for a few words, his mood finally recovered .
The first batch of people hired as contract workers, like Billy, were mostly from the slums, both men and women, but there were fewer women. The dormitory they lived in was not in the South City area, but in the Midtown area.
The night classes for female contract workers were not held in the South City, but in the former Viscount O'Neill's Mansion in the Midtown. Billy had heard that the women attended classes together with very handsome men and women from Garden Street and Central Avenue, but he did not usually go to the Midtown area, so he had never seen them with his own eyes.
The night school in the South City District is located in a large house not far from Liujiao Alley. It used to be a casino owned by a local gang and had a beautiful and spacious courtyard. However, the courtyard has now been razed to the ground and the original pond has been filled in, turning it into a large square that can accommodate thousands of people for classes at the same time.
Billy, who brought his own small stool, joined forces with someone he knew and found a corner in the square to sit down. Soon , more people came to the square.
Nowadays, the contract workers hired by the City Hall are not only people from the slums, but also many citizens from the South City and the port area. These people are not willing to get together with those who were born in the slums, and are always clearly divided into two factions.
The people around Billy hate the arrogance of those "city people" and think that city people are not as easy to deal with as people from outside the city; Billy himself doesn't feel that way... He has been bullied by people in the slums since he was a child, and he was often despised when he went to the city to work. People inside and outside the city are all the same to him.
The square was packed with people inside and outside, and the clerk who was going to give a lecture went on stage.
The clerk who gave the lecture today was a man about the same age as Billy's older brother. He was as slender as a woman, and although his skin was tanned and rough, he still had a handsome appearance.
As the clerk began his lecture, Billy heard someone nearby muttering some unfriendly words and making a sneering sound.
Billy glanced at the person who was whispering with disgust, remembered the person's appearance, reached out and lifted the small stool under his butt, and moved it slightly away.
"Don't deal with such impolite people in the future." Billy reminded himself secretly in his heart and listened to the class seriously.
The content of the night class is very simple. It just teaches some commonly used common words, tells some short and interesting stories to make people remember the meaning of the words and the scenarios of application, and some simple polite words, such as saying "please" when you want help and expressing gratitude after being helped.
This kind of content that elementary school students and even preschool children on Earth learn is considered a literacy course in this alien world... Although it is difficult to understand, there are indeed many uneducated people who do not know the most basic social etiquette and cannot even say thank you.
The clerk taught the audience ten commonly used general characters in detail, just like the audience before, and explained the occasions when these characters are used. He also picked up the prepared newspaper and read the content of the newspaper to the audience, explaining the reasons and background of the news published in the newspaper...
Night classes, which are more mobile, cannot prepare teaching materials like the schools that children attend, so they can only use newspapers that are commonly seen in life as teaching materials. Anyone who can understand newspapers can understand the announcements and decrees issued by the city hall. If this can be achieved, literacy can be considered a success.
Billy listened to the class carefully, and after class he went to get a newspaper that the clerk teacher had read tonight. He took it back to the dormitory to reread it and review and consolidate the text he had learned as much as possible. This kind of briefing was only published by the city hall and was provided free of charge to the public.
When Billy returned to the dormitory, his roommate, who was lazily lying on the bed, suddenly perked up and asked him who the clerk was who would be teaching the class tonight and whether she was the stunningly beautiful Ms. Phoebe.
Billy's anger rose suddenly. He glared at the other person fiercely and climbed onto the bed.
"Why did you suddenly go crazy?" The roommate who was glared at complained dissatisfiedly.
The next day, Billy couldn't wait to run to the City Hall before going to work and register at the Road Construction Bureau of the Municipal Construction Division.
After waiting for another two days, Billy was successfully transferred from the Logistics Department to the department he wanted. He moved out of his original dormitory and followed the militia from Inadli to learn the safety issues that should be paid attention to in road construction.
In the following week, Billy was excited to come into contact with the various mechanical creations owned by the Road Construction Bureau. Because of his higher enthusiasm and stronger learning ability, he was even chosen by an operator to be an assistant and learn how to drive a truck...
By December, more than 200,000 slum dwellers had been relocated, leaving only more than 10,000 but less than 20,000 households waiting to draw lots for low-rent housing.
The city hall was pleased with the speed of diversion and resettlement, so it simply brought forward the lottery allocation.
Billy, who is alone and cannot form a household, is not eligible for the lottery and can only submit his application after he gets married.
More than 300,000 slum dwellers were relocated and resettled, and the road construction project, which had been prepared for nearly two months, officially broke ground.
After being held in prisoner-of-war camps and prisons for nearly two months, the prisoners finally saw the light of day again... Of course, they probably didn't want to see this day at all.
The first major project the prisoner road construction team took part in was to completely flatten the slums outside the city.
It is not an easy task to completely flatten the slums that cover an area of more than ten kilometers. In addition to demolishing tens of thousands of illegally built dilapidated houses all over the mountains, it is also necessary to clean up the extremely shocking mountains of garbage - some created by residents inside the city, and some created by residents outside the city.
Billy, who was considered a half-technician, was assigned to the transportation team. He drove a small truck with his partner and was responsible for transporting the garbage picked out by the prisoners to a farther place for incineration or landfill.
Billy, who had just learned to drive for more than half a month, was nervously transporting garbage back and forth with his partner. The round-trip distance of less than 30 kilometers made these two novice drivers without a driver's license drive as if they were facing a great enemy.
After a busy morning, Billy returned to the slums and waited for the prisoners to load garbage into the truck. While silently reviewing the driver's manual, he unexpectedly saw his former roommate among the prisoners.
"Isn't that man a contract worker like us? How come he is among the prisoners?" Billy asked his partner in surprise.
The partner was also surprised: "Is this true? Who is also a contract worker?"
Billy pointed out his former cellmate who was carrying trash in the prisoner line with a sad look on his face, but his partner didn't recognize him.
In the early stages of slum cleanup, it is not yet time for contract workers from the Road Construction Bureau to be deployed. Except for technicians like Billy who know how to drive trucks, others will be transferred only after the dangerous buildings are demolished and the garbage is cleared. Now they are all working at the dock and reinforcing the flood control embankment on the dock.
Billy was really curious about how his former roommate, who kept saying he was going to the Public Security Bureau, became a prisoner, so after work he went to the Public Security Bureau to ask someone about it.
The Public Security Department also recruited a lot of contract workers. When Billy arrived, the Public Security Department, which had moved from the City Hall to the port area, was organizing training. Hundreds of contract workers who wanted to be militiamen were sticking out their tongues and moving sandbags on the dock. They were helping the engineering team that was reinforcing the dock's flood-control embankment and also exercising their physical fitness.
Billy found a contractor he knew and asked about his former roommate. The contractor who was sweating profusely from carrying sandbags and had blood marks on his shoulders laughed when he heard his name. "You mean that guy? He did sign up, but he couldn't keep up with the training after a few days. His grades in the night class were also terrible, so he was asked to withdraw by the agent."
"Then how did he become a prisoner?" Billy asked curiously.
"This is really funny." The contract worker who was trying to become a militiaman gloated, "You know, the City Hall cleared all the casinos and brothels in the city. After paying their salaries last month, some people felt that they had no place to spend their money, so they ran to Garden Street to harass the rescued people. Isn't this what happened to us?"
Billy was surprised and said with disgust: "You don't want to be a paid contract worker, but you have to be a prisoner with low pay and dirty and tiring work. This time you can't just quit if you don't want to, you deserve it!"
