POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION
government and the UNHCR. Canada, the United States and Australia remain the three major resettlement countries for Vietnamese refugees. During the year, 2278 refugees were resettled in the United States, 1 513 in Canada, 1 502 in Australia, and 2 363 in other Western countries.
Non-refugees in the detention centres are not allowed to leave the centres except for special trips such as educational excursions for the children or attendance in hospital for medical treatment. Voluntary agencies operate under the auspices of the UNHCR and provide as wide a range of social services as is practicable in the centres.
To relieve continuing overcrowding in the existing camps, a new detention centre was built on the island of Tai A Chau during the year to accommodate up to 10 000 non- refugees. The centre is managed by Hong Kong Housing Services for Refugees, a private non-profit-making company which has also been appointed by the UNHCR to run the Pillar Point Open Centre. The construction cost of Tai A Chau was $229 million of which $115 million was contributed by the United Kingdom Government.
At the end of 1990, there were three open centres and 10 detention centres, housing 8 161 Vietnamese refugees and 43 875 Vietnamese boat people respectively.
The cost of looking after all the VBP and refugees in Hong Kong came to $637 million in 1990, of which $623 million was spent on detention centres and $14 million on open
centres.
To encourage non-refugees to return to Vietnam, a Voluntary Repatriation Programme has been organised by the UNHCR. Between the start of the programme in March 1989 and end-1990, 6 313 Vietnamese have voluntarily returned to Vietnam from Hong Kong. The returnees include 1 528 who have been screened-out, 4 768 waiting to be screened and 17 refugees.
For a long time, however, it has been clear that the voluntary programme alone will not solve the enormous problem of providing a humane future for all those stranded in Hong Kong's camps. To reinforce the message about the need to volunteer, arrangements are needed also to return non-volunteers among those who have fully exhausted the screening and appeal procedures, with adequate monitoring and assistance with reintegration in Vietnam. On December 12, 1989, 51 screened-out Vietnamese non-refugees were returned to Vietnam under an agreement between the Hong Kong Government and the Vietnamese authorities. It is the Hong Kong Government's intention that, in accordance with the terms of the international agreement reached at Geneva in June 1989 on the resolution of the Indochinese refugee problem, the process of repatriation should continue with all the appropriate safeguards. To this end, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Vietnamese Governments and the UNHCR reached agreement in Hanoi in September on arrange- ments to speed up voluntary return and to introduce a new scheme to repatriate non- volunteers who do not object to returning, with all the same safeguards as volunteers. The new scheme made a slow start, with 23 being returned to Hanoi by the UNHCR by the end of the year.
During the year the Hong Kong Government and the Philippines Government agreed to move up to 5 000 refugees to a new Regional Resettlement Transit Centre in Bataan in the Philippines. The centre was built with a contribution of £3 million provided by the United Kingdom Government. By end-1990, some 800 refugees had been sent to the transit centre.
379
380
וי