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possessing or trafficking in dangerous drugs, deception, theft and other criminal offences were considered for deportation and subsequently 138 were deported from Hong Kong. In addition, 3 956 persons were removed from Hong Kong under removal orders. These included 3 724 illegal immigrants and 232 persons who had breached their condition of stay.
Civil Aid Services
The Civil Aid Services (CAS) is an auxiliary emergency measures organisation whose main role is to support other regular government services in any emergency situation. It is financed by government and has an establishment of 3 725 uniformed and disciplined adult volunteers, 3 232 cadets and 123 permanent staff.
Role and Responsibilities
With heavy emphasis on coping with natural disaster and performing civic duties, the tasks of the service are numerous and far-reaching. The volunteers are trained to perform counter-disaster duties during tropical cyclones, when landslips and flooding occur, to search for and rescue persons trapped in collapsed buildings, to fight forest fires and to patrol country parks, to manage refugee camps, to combat oil pollution at sea, assist the police in crowd control and incident management and to perform first-aid, casualty handling and evacuation, and to carry out difficult mountain rescue operations. On any weekend or public holiday it is normal for over 500 volunteers to be on duty. The Tactical Force is on a 90-minute call out throughout the year.
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Civic Duties
The service is also very heavily committed to perform civic duties in normal times. During the year, adult volunteers helped to organise and provide crowd control, communication and marshalling services in charity fund-raising walks, government campaigns, charity drives and at other public functions.
Vietnamese Boat People
With the continual influx of Vietnamese boat people into Hong Kong from April 1988, it was necessary to rapidly mobilise CAS volunteers to assist in setting up new refugee centres and to manage them initially until handing over to other services. Under CAS management were the Harbour Reception Centre and the Argyle Street Detection Centre. The two centres had a population of over 3 700 Vietnamese.
The setting up of new centres in a very short space of time required a great deal of expertise by permanent staff and volunteers. The centres required complete reprovisioning of accommodation, security fencing, toilets, showers, electricity and water supplies. It was very pleasing to record the CAS was able to meet all these demands.
The effect on personnel working in these centres was physically and psychologically exhausting. Duties were performed under very hot, humid, unpleasant and difficult conditions. A great deal of control and patience was exercised by all personnel.
Service Training
Service training is divided into centralised courses and unit training, both of which are designed to promote and maintain the operational efficiency of the service. The centralised courses in 1989-90 comprised a wide variety of subjects. Besides normal counter-disaster courses, first-aid, fire-fighting and conventional rescue instruction was given, the aim being