30 REFUGEE FAMILIES

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29170, 2 April 1960, Page 10

30 REFUGEE FAMILIES

Arrival In N.Z.. Next Month [From the London Correspondent of "The Press"] LONDON, March 25. The first 30 European refugee families who have been adopted by New Zealand as a contribution to World Refugee Year will leave Rotterdam for the Dominion on April 19. That day, 114 men, women and children, most of them Hungarians and Jugoslavs who come from camps in Germany, Italy and Austria, will go aboard the Dutch migrant ship, Waterman. They will reach Wellington on May 26.

Work is' going ahead on the selection of a further 50 European families now in refugee camps whom New Zealand has undertaken to accept. These families, to whom, after years of waiting, a new home is at last being offered, may include elderly or handicapped people which puts the operation quite outside the normal pattern of immigration policy. This second draft, for which a short list is being prepared by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, may also be drawn from camps in Greece. Some Jf the people who hope to be chosen have been in camps since soon after World War 11.

The operation of getting the more fortunate families away from these camps to new homes is the work of the Inter-govern-mental Committee for European Migration, on which New Zealand has a representative. The funds for this are contributed by member nations, especially the United States; New Zealand has also made special contributions for the transport of refugees. When the New Zealand Government announced last year that the first 30 families would be found homes it also agreed to accept 20 families from China, through Hong Kong. Their settlement and accommodation in the Dominion is largely in the hands of religious social service organisations.