PLANS to amalgamate at least two of the three major Vietnamese detention centres have been shelved at a cost to taxpayers of about $57 million a year.
Officially, the Government has blamed the delay on dwindling departures of asylum seekers, but government sources said there were also concerns about the transfer of detainees in the wake of the controversial Whitehead raid on April 7.
In January, the Government said plans were in place to close all but two of the camps holding asylum seekers.
However, since then the number of people leaving on voluntary repatriation flights has dropped from 2,000 a month to less than 200 a month.
The biggest camp expected to close was Tai A Chau, which holds about 7,000 people mostly from southern Vietnam and costs about $57 million a year in operating and infrastructure costs.
The largest detention centre in Hong Kong is the Whitehead camp where about 13,000 people are detained. It mostly houses people who fled the northern provinces of Vietnam.