TNAG-1185-FCO40-1487-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-into-the--1982 — Page 136

Settlement

17. Although Government accepted the reception phase of the programme as its responsibility and has met the costs, its general policy regarding settlement has been that there should be no special funding and that in settlement the Vietnamese must be dependent on what is available statutorily or voluntarily at local level. (Two important exceptions to this policy, an adult education project and the provision of some limited funding which has supported the efforts of the agencies' staff to meet the refugees' needs in settlement, are dealt with in Section 4 of our report.) This policy has presented us with considerable difficulties in finding housing for the Vietnamese. Nevertheless as indicated in our introduction, we expect by the end of this year to have housed those who remained in reception centres at the end of September.

18. For the purpose of settlement each agency was given responsibility for particular zones of the country. These are shown in Appendix B together with an indication of the pattern of settlement which has been achieved.

19. We have to stress, however, that settlement is not simply a matter of housing ideally it means the securing of housing in an area where large enough groups can be established to be mutually supportive, where active support from the host community can be expected and where there is reasonable prospect of employment and access to education - and that, other than exceptionally, proper settlement of the Vietnamese has not been achieved. Quite why this is, what the difficulties facing the Vietnamese are and what can be done to overcome them are set out in Section 4 of our report.

Costs

20. A summary of expenditure on the Vietnamese refugees is given in Appendix C. This shows an overall cost of some £21.6m. The bulk of this expenditure, £18.4m, was for the running of the reception centres, including the provision of education. Government support for the Vietnamese in settlement was given in special projects which are identified and in the limited funding provided for a number of posts within the staff of the refugee agencies which have been concerned to help the Vietnamese with their problems in settlement. We estimate that this funding totalled some £1.05m. i.e. less than 5 per cent of the overall expenditure.

4.