§ Mr. Dickensasked the Minister of Overseas Development if he will specify, precisely and in detail, the commitments incurred in technical assistance to South Vietnam, under the Colombo Plan, from 1964 to the latest date.
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§ Mr. PrenticeThe details are as follows:
BILATERAL TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO SOUTH VIETNAM UNDER THE COLOMBO PLAN Calendar Years £000 1964 1965 1966 1st Jan.–3lst March, 1967 1967–68 (estimates) Trainees … … … … 5.0 9 16 5 12 Experts … … … … 2.3 6 56 24 130.5 Equipment … … … … 1.7 4 22 9 67.5 Buildings (small capital grants) … — — — 10 — 9.0 19 94 48 210 (In addition South Vietnam shared the benefit with Laos, Thailand and Cambodia of experts and equipment for the improvement of navigation on the Mekong, provided by Her Majesty's Government between 1964 and 1966. £56,000 worth of the equipment comprising buoys, channel markers, etc., was specifically destined for South Vietnam.)
Trainees
Spheres of study have included public administration and law; Trades Unions; Co-operatives; export promotion; television broadcasting and journalism; agriculture; photography; medicine and pharmacy. In the current financial year there have so far been eight trainees, and four more applications have been approved in principle. We have told the Vietnamese Government that we should welcome additional applications.
Experts
Between 1964 and 1966 the Ministry of Overseas Development financed one English Language lectureship at Hue University and short term visits by advisers on tea production, tropical medicine, paediatrics and technical education. In July, 1966, our 5-year commitment at the children's hospital in Saigon began. As the House has already been informed we hope to increase our medical team there from 11 to 18, probably during the course of the current financial year. Since January, 1967, a British tea adviser, who is also to act as manager of a green tea factory now being built by the Vietnamese Government, has been working at Blao, 120 miles north-east of Saigon.
Equipment
Expenditure in 1964 and 1965 was confined to minor purchases for Universities and hospitals. Equipment provided between 1st January, 1966, and 31st
328WMarch, 1967, included 40 anæsthetic medicines for provincial hospitals; equipment, supplies and drugs for the pædiatric team; Visual Aid Slope Indicator equipment for Saigon Airport (a standard International Civil Aviation Organisation requirement for international airports) and miscellaneous minor items of equipment and books. In the current financial year, apart from miscellaneous items totalling about £1,700, the estimated expenditures cover exclusively equipment and supplies furnished to the Faculty of Pharmacy and to the Children's Hospital. It is possible that some part of these expenditures may fall in 1968–69 rather than in the current financial year.
Buildings
The 1967 expenditure was for a new laboratory at the Children's Hospital.