PTAANB
CONFIDENTIAL
need, in the rural areas from which a high proportion of the boat people depart, for Vocational Training, for tools and equipment for workshops, and for vehicles such as Land Rovers/Range Rovers. Mr Dubs also provided grounds for optimism that a Consortium of NGOS would be willing to establish an office in Vietnam to undertake monitoring of non-volunteer returnees. HMG would need to provide the necessary funds. We are consulting Hanoi to get an estimate of the likely costs of a monitoring operation. We envisage that both the reintegration assistance element and the monitoring element would be drawn from the same source; there may even be advantage in arranging for the NGO office to administer the reintegration assistance programme. We are consulting ODA on the preparation of a
case to put to the Treasury on this.
4.
Hong Kong have provided us with a detailed breakdown of the Construction items totalling £5.548m in cost. This sum would have to be drawn from the FCO vote: it would be unsavoury to use aid funds for the building of detention centres, but more to the point, it would be hard to justify allocation of aid to an area with the GDP per capita of Hong Kong. We are working with RMD to include a bid for this amount in our approach to the treasury, as sanctioned by the meeting of OD(K) on 4 October.
5.
We are currently corresponding with Hong Kong about their plans to begin construction of contingency accommodation for a possible influx of people next year. At this stage we propose to go no further than put the Treasury on notice of the likely scale and cost of the project: Hong Kong are suggesting that a UK contribution might be in the region of £13 million.
Charles Howell
C C D Haswell
CONFIDENTIAL
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