OXFAM
LIFE IN THE CLOSED CENTRES
樂施會
There has been some improvement in living conditions in the closed centres over the past 18 months.
The barbed wire which topped the perimeter fences has come down. Relationships between Correctional Services Department (CSD) staff and the refugees are usually fairly relaxed and there have been no major disturbances. Educational facilities are better than they were, and we saw some good vocational training and work programmes. Food stalls run by the refugees do good business, and at Chi Ma Wan there is even a fitness room.
But there has been no fundamental change. The closed centres are still prisons. The accommodation is poor, the management system offers no role for the family, and there is no sense of community. Control is still the main concern - at Argyle Reception Centre the number of refugees has dwindled to just 151, but 64 CSD staff are still employed to guard them.
We have four particular areas of concern about life in the closed centres overcrowding, education, vocational training and employment, and centre management.
1. Overcrowding
Hei Ling Chau and Tuen Mun centres are both seriously overcrowded.
The position is particularly bad at Hei Ling Chau, where 2,901 people are crammed into ten huts which were built to house 2,000. An extra row of bunks has been squeezed down the middle of each hut. People are sleeping on three decks, and those on the top deck have no privacy at all.
We have said before that a space eight feet by six feet by three feet is totally inadequate as long-term accommodation for a family. For a family in the middle row of bunks at Hei Ling Chau, with other families above, below and on all four sides of them, such accommodation is a scandal.
Each hut of 290 people has just one male toilet and one female toilet. The minimum standard for a local temporary housing area is one toilet per 40 people, but at Hei Ling Chau there is one per 145. Refugees complained of long queues to use the toilets in the evening, and not surprisingly children urinate outside. More toilets are urgently needed.
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