Let us work, cry asylum seekers
Refugee applicants face the streets without the right to jobs
Asylum seekers living in tiny flats in Kowloon are expecting to be thrown out onto the streets once the UN's refugee agency stops financial assistance.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees pays for the 100 sq ft room that 'Joseph', 31, from a central African country, shares with his wife and their three-year-old son, but the family has been told the last payment will be in two weeks.
That will be enough to pay their rent until the end of April. The family receives $1,600 for food and $1,200 for rent each month.
'The UNHCR gives us money for our son. We don't get money from anywhere else and we are not allowed to work in Hong Kong. How are we supposed to survive? If the Hong Kong government cannot give us money, then it must let us work,' he said.
Asylum seekers are not permitted to work in the city as Hong Kong has not ratified the UN's convention on refugees, so asylum seekers are usually considered illegal immigrants.
Consequently, many seek to conceal their identities.
Of the 1,300 asylum seekers in Hong Kong, the UNHCR currently funds 80 of them, mostly single mothers with young children and the sick and mentally ill.
Angelina, 29, who fled a central African country last year after her husband was arrested, arrived in Hong Kong in July last year. She said she lives in a one-room cockroach-infested apartment with her two-year-old son.
'The UNHCR pays our rent directly to the landlord and I've already been given notice to move out on April 4 because the rent will only be paid up till then. We will end up sleeping at the Star Ferry' she said.
Monique Sokhan, head of the UNHCR in Hong Kong, said on Monday that the agency had approached the government and NGOs to try to find alternative funding for the asylum seekers. She said that due to worldwide cuts in funding, the agency could now only afford to support confirmed refugees.
The government's Health, Welfare and Food Bureau said it offered, on a case-by-case basis, welfare assistance to those 'who are deprived of basic needs', in the form of accommodation, food, clothing and counselling, and waivers of medical expenses at public clinics or hospitals.
The Security Bureau defended the government's stance on asylum seekers and refugees saying: 'Hong Kong is small in size and has a high and dense population ... We thus have a firm policy of not granting asylum, and we do not have any obligation to admit individuals seeking refugee status under the 1951 Convention on Refugees.'
Society for Community Organisation organiser Annie Lin, said the UNHCR's decision to stop the funding would put extra pressure on cash-strapped NGOs and charities.
'Now we have to pressure the government even more to help.'
