There are 8000 Gurkhas serving with United Kindom forces and 100,000 serving with the Indian forces. There is also the Nepalese Army.
This tripartite arrangement was agreed in 1947.
Gurkhas receive the same pay as UK soldiers when in the UK but less when
serving in Hongkong or Brunei.
Gurkha soldiers in Nepal are paid on the same rates as the Nepalese Army plus certain allowances.
25% are provided for married quarters, in other words the soldier has one accompanied three year tour in his 15 years service. Senior ranks are accompanied by their families and accommodation is provided.
The tour in the United Kingdom is unaccompanied.
Vietnamese Refugees
Some 100,000 boat people have escaped from the Communist regime in Viet Nam to Hongkong. Some 92,000 have been resettled by the UN Commission for Refugees, 55, 200 in the United States, 15,600 in Canada, 13,000 in the UK, 2,600 in Australia, 2,300 in the FRG and 1,120 in France. Those now arriving in Hongkong were mainly economic refugees.
13,
There was a hard core of some 11,000 now in the Colony. Up to date they had been accommodated in open camps but now they were to be placed on an island in closed camps.
The refugees in Kowloon we visited were accommodated in huts that had been used by the Japanese for British prisoners of war - at the same density which, during World War II, we had described as inhuman!
Some of these refugees had been detained for up to 3 years. I would have thought the detention of refugees in the closed camp was against the basic human rights of any individual. While in no way blaming the Hongkong Government who have an enormous immigration problem to deal with, I do believe that every pressure should be put on the United Nations to re- settle the hard core of boat people who still remain in the Colony.
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