야
·
CONFIDENTIAL
2
2. (contd)
score.
In addition, our emergency housing facilities, which are already pretty fully stretched by resettlement programmes, must retain sufficient spare capacity to deal with sudden disasters such as typhoons, flooding or fire.
3.
The overcrowding in the accommodation used by UNHCR (which makes the terms "hotel" or "hostel" rather misleading) has been a source of increasing concern to our Medical and Health Department. Fortunately there has not yet been any outbreak of infectious disease.
However,
we are trying to reduce the risks by providing facilities for longer medical checks on landing and before the refugees move into UNHCR accommodation.
4.
We hope UNHCR will eventually find enough places to reduce the over crowding. One development which should help is that the Macau government has recently told the US Consulate-General here that it is willing to provide U NHCR with transit facilities for refugees who are expected to move to the US within the next 3 to 6 months. Initially 400 could be accommodated, with the possibility of more if the scheme works well.
The Americans are anxious to move as many as possible to Macau, largely because accommodation and food there will cost a maximum of US$5 per day, about US$3 less than here; they are concerned that if UNHCR needs additional funds for its South-East Asia programme, Congress will question the high costs incurred in Hong Kong (at present running at about US$14,000 per day). They plan to send to Macau all who are likely to be accepted under their new programme (see paras. 5-6 below), even if processing has not been completed in all cases. This means they will be unable to give the guarantee for which Macau has asked, that all the refugees will leave within a fixed period; we have therefore agreed to help out by undertaking to accept back in Hong Kong any refugees who are not resettled within this period if the Macau government does not grant them an extension of stay. Details of these transit arrangements should soon be completed and we shall let you know how it works.
The New US Programme
5.
Numbers arriving would be less of a problem if there were reasonable prospects of refugees being resettled within 3 to 4 months, as was the case earlier this year. Unfortunately it is clear that the new US Indo-China Long-Range Parole Programme (L R P) will lead to an increasing backlog of refugees throughout the region over the next year. Shepherd Lowman, the Director of the State Department's Office of Refugee and Migration Affairs, was in Hong Kong last week and sought to reassure us that,
1
•
CONFIDENTIAL
-/3.