2
items of Government recurrent expenditure, and the faster it grows the less we have to spend on our own much-needed medical, education and social welfare projects.
programman раднати
The burden on the Hong Kong taxpayer is easily
three
the
人
measured in terms of dollars. The anguish and hopelessness of refugees kept in camps year after year is not so easily measured. 4,335 of the refugees, now in open and closed camps have been there for more than years: 968 have been there for
siven more than years. With the declining rate of resettlement these numbers will increase, and the frustration and lack of motivation borne of hopelessness will also increase. Already social workers in the camps are reporting a markedly increased incidence of violence, particularly within the family, and have expressed concern over the erosion of the family unit and a decline in parental authority caused by there the institutional
Siv nature of the camps. We are, I think, all convinced that
"A without the closed centre policy Hong Kong would very quickly be flooded with Vietnamese boat people. But I do not believe
five
that years ago, when the policy was introduced, any of us would have imagined that probably more than half of the refugees who were to enter those centres could expect to remain
five there for years or years or even longer, or that there
th
would be children born and brought up in the centres who have known no other existence.
Sir, the boat people now coming to Hong Kong, in respect of whom this resolution is relevant, are predominantly farmers and fishermen from northern Vietnam. They are not the sort of people who are going to find it easy to settle into the sophisticated, industrial societies of the countries that are now accepting refugees for resettlement. Nor are they likely to be very attractive candidates for resettlement in the first place, especially when they have lost confidence, self-esteem and motivation through years of confinement in closed camps. We are in danger of having on our hands refugees who are