The slum with tin houses

Post Date: Sep 27th, 2013 | Categories: Advocacy | COMMENT

A half hour walk into the fields from the waterway south of Yuen Long, is a ghostly shantytown. It has a hard reputation. Triad gangs have attempted to control this area and clashes have erupted which authorities cannot break up in this remote area. Many refugees have left this isolated area to live closer to town.

Currently twenty refugees from Nepal, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh live here. They hate this area and want to move away, but don’t have money to secure better homes. Owned by two brothers and a sister, this shacks are falling apart with rot and corrosion. It is hard to tell what this area used to be, probably a shanty-town abandoned by local residents in years gone by.

There is a sense of desolation that wasn’t experienced in other clusters. Perhaps the history of this place is darker than usual. Something unsettling kept us on edge as we visited these refugee homes that still felt ‘temporary’ after three or four years of inhabitation.

ISS would be hard pressed to demonstrate that these residents want to stay in these remote shacks. The residents told us that they want to move but homes are too expensive and they are trapped in this miserable place. This is a sad, depressing site we were happy to leave.

The slum with tin houses.

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