Rough Homecoming for Repatriate Boat People : Vietnam: Those who voluntarily return from Hong Kong are hard-pressed to support themselves. The key is economic reform now being pushed by Hanoi.

Dinh Hong Qui is finding it no easy task to begin life anew in impoverished northern Vietnam after voluntarily returning home from the squalid camps of Hong Kong.

“At present I am doing nothing. I haven’t any job and I have to rely on my parents,” the 28-year-old man said in a recent interview in coastal Quang Ninh Province. “For the time being it is very difficult.”

Qui and his wife are among nearly 1,000 people who have voluntarily returned from the British colony after finding their dreams for a new life abroad dashed by the Hong Kong policy of considering Vietnamese asylum-seekers who arrive by boat as illegal immigrants.

About 44,000 boat people who have sailed into Hong Kong since June, 1988, face repatriation against their will unless they can prove that they fled political persecution or return voluntarily under a program sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Charles-Henry Bazoche, head of the U.N. agency’s mission in Hanoi, acknowledged the economic difficulties faced by the returnees but believes that market-oriented economic reforms under way in communist Vietnam will lead to rapid improvement.

“They have made a reasoned, mature decision,” Bazoche said of the voluntary returnees. “They know that Hong Kong is a dead end.

“The (economic) situation in Vietnam is evolving very fast. I do believe the next four years will see many more changes,” he said. “I am deeply convinced that life in Vietnam is better than in a camp anywhere.”

Bazoche said the number of boat people seeking voluntary repatriation from Hong Kong has been on the rise, with about 2,000 applications pending.

More than 230 of the boat people who have voluntarily returned are from Quang Ninh, a northern province of hauntingly beautiful coastline where sampans sail between islands of dramatic rock formations.

Qui and his wife last spring left behind jobs as a factory welder and tourist official with a total monthly salary of about $16 and sold their house to help pay for seats on a boat to Hong Kong, which cost $500 in gold.

Soon after they arrived in the British colony, however, they became fed up with the strange food and cramped conditions in the detention centers and decided to apply for repatriation.

The couple boarded a chartered flight to Vietnam on Nov. 30 and have been living at the austere brick home of Qui’s parents, which is simply decorated with ornamental chili plants flanking the doorway and a poster of “Miss Hanoi” inside.

Qui, whose wife is six months pregnant, hopes he can borrow enough money from friends to start his own mechanical repair business. “If I’m lucky in doing my business, life will be much better, but if I’m not lucky, maybe not,” he said.

Cao Van Lam, a voluntary returnee who lives with his parents down the road from Qui, wants to start his own carpentry business but also lacks capital.

Lam, 25, said he has had difficulty finding work since he left the army last year. “I just want to have a normal life to do business,” he said. “I think my hope will be fulfilled.”

The U.N. agency provides $50 in cash to each returning adult to help with initial resettlement costs, but the money often is squandered.

Lam, for example, said he spent the money on cigarettes, while Qui spent part of his grant on beer and wine for a farewell party in Hong Kong.

The U.N. also provides Vietnamese who return voluntarily with a monthly allowance of $30 for one year, but Bazoche said what is really needed are development programs in the northern provinces, where most of the boat people set sail.

While U.N. officials believe the voluntary return program can play a big role in reducing the number of Vietnamese languishing in Hong Kong camps, another massive influx of boat people this year could trigger demands in the colony for quicker action.

Officials in Quang Ninh and the nearby port city of Haiphong say they have launched a media campaign to dissuade Vietnamese from sailing to Hong Kong, about 500 miles to the northeast.

Newspapers and radio have stories quoting returning Vietnamese describing “how hard and painful life is in the Hong Kong camps,” said Tran Xuan Nguyen, a provincial official in Quang Ninh.

The province also has cracked down on people organizing the boat journeys to Hong Kong, with more than 135 accused of such crimes last year, he said.

Haiphong officials believe that since August, nobody has left for Hong Kong from the port, a popular staging ground for boat people. They express optimism that the number of departures in the spring sailing season will fall below the massive waves of the last two years.

“I think that the number of people that are going to leave Vietnam will be limited to the minimum,” said Hoang Ngoc Tri, a Haiphong government official who deals with the returning boat people.

“It’s very difficult to predict the actual figure, but we want to stop it immediately, absolutely,” he said. “All we can do is try our best.”