Despite an increasingly critical financial situation, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency maintained its established relief and health services to Arab refugees during 1964 without major change, the United Nation, reported today. The report stressed that the agency continued to develop programs of education and vocational and teacher training in an effort to prepare younger refugees for the future.
The report said that about 45 per cent of UNRWA funds were used for relief, 42 per cent for education and training and 13 per cent for health. The relief included basic food rations, supplementary feeding and milk, shelter, clothing and special help for hardship cases. There were 1,252,944 refugees registered with UNRWA on September 30, 1964, with 878,600 eligible for basic rations, about 3,300 less than during the previous year, the report stated.
UNRWA continued efforts to rectify its rolls to ensure that only refugees genuinely in need received rations and made plans for a more intensified rectification program in 1965,” the report emphasized. It pointed out that most of the refugees have found their own accommodations in nearby towns and villages. UNRWA’s 54 camps continued to provide shelter for some 40 per cent of the registered refugees. Two camps were closed in 1964 because they were unsatisfactory. The residents were moved to new dwellings built partly with help from UNRWA.
UNRWA offered in 1964 six years of education to all refugee children, plus an additional three years to those who finished the elementary classes satisfactorily and secondary education to a limited but growing number. About 173,000 children were enrolled in 401 UNRWA UNESCO schools in October 1964, compared with more than 150,000 the previous year, the largest annual increase in such enrollment in the past ten years. Another 58,000 attended government or private schools most of them with grants from UNRWA. Higher education was made available to selected students through UNRWA university scholarships, 652 such scholarships being made available for the 1964-65 academic year, compared with 602 the previous year.
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