SYDNEY: Australia is offering asylum seekers in its Pacific immigration camps up to $10,000 (US$9,400) if they voluntarily return to their home country, a newspaper report said on Saturday.

Fairfax Media reported that those returning to Lebanon from detention centres on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and the tiny Pacific state of Nauru were offered the highest amount of $10,000.

Iranians and Sudanese were given $7,000 if they dropped bids for refugee status, Afghans $4,000 and those from Pakistan, Nepal and Myanmar $3,300, the report in The Sydney Morning Herald said.

The Herald said under the previous Labour administration — in office until last September — the payments ranged from $1,500 to $2,000.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said “return packages” were standard practice but would not reveal what the maximum payments had been.

“It has been the standard practice for more than a decade for settlement packages to be offered to those who voluntarily return home,” Morrison told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The packages are tailored individually for every person who decides to voluntarily return home, he said. “The packages range (in terms of) value and it’s not just in terms of any financial element, but also training, support and other issues to assist people to get on their feet when they return,” he said.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2014