Even at its lowest ebb in the mid-1980s, the tide of new arrivals never dropped.

Just 12 boat-people have been picked up in Hongkong waters this year, and more than 12,000 have returned home.

The tide turned virtually overnight at the end of October, 1991, when Britain and Vietnam signed an agreement to forcibly repatriate boat people who would not join the United Nations-sponsored voluntary return programme.

The initial accord covered only new arrivals and the so-called double-backers, who had gone back to Vietnam voluntarily with United Nations money in their pockets, spent it and came back for more.

But it was only a matter of time before agreement would be reached on forcing home the remaining tens of thousands.

The message was understood.

Thousands have volunteered to go home rather than wait to be forced.

Gradually, the sprawling, tense detention centres are being closed down and the first police and correctional services department guards are being redeployed to other jobs.

Immigration officers, now working flat out, hope to complete refugee screening by mid 1994.

It is still a bit early to cry victory. With more than 43,000 left languishing in the camps, 16,000 of them still awaiting screening, it will be two or three years before the camps are cleared.

Nonetheless, for the Government's Security Branch at least, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

But for the Vietnamese, life is no bed of roses.

Thugs rule the roost in many sections of the worst camps.

Children grow up in crowded unsanitary huts without ever experiencing life outside the barbed wire or a world without fear. And there may be worse to come.

Last Chinese New Year, a bloody riot in Sek Kong camp gave a taste of what might be in store.

Twenty-four people died and many more were injured when South Vietnamese hurled burning blankets into a hut housing North Vietnamese and kept the security forces at bay until it was too late to help them.

The trial of those charged with the violence is still going on.

As the voluntary repatriations continue, and the occasional forced repatriations fail to mop up more than a tiny minority of the real men of violence, the danger of rioting and bloodshed is likely to increase.

Unless the candidates for mandatory repatriation are chosen with care and precision, those who remain in the camps by mid-1994 will be an increasingly restive rump of bully-boys and a sad minority of boat-people who believe they have a genuine cause to fear persecution in Vietnam and have nowhere else to go.

For those people. Hongkong's much criticised screening process will have failed, no matter how hard the Government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) tries to defend it.

So far, however, there is no proven case of any boat-people returning to Vietnam being imprisoned for political reasons.

While the country remains desperately poor, the European Community (EC) is funding resettlement projects that offer returning boat-people vocational training or loans to start small businesses and offer employment to others.

With the United States trade embargo already partially lifted, there is new hope the Vietnamese economy may be poised to take off.

That in itself will be a huge incentive for many more disillusioned boat-people to volunteer to go home.