Two more refugees being held by Australia in an offshore detention facility have volunteered to relocate to Cambodia, a local English newspaper reported on Thursday, citing an immigration official.

Kerm Sarin, administration chief at the Cambodian Interior Ministry's immigration department, said the two new volunteers from the refugee camp on the South Pacific island of Nauru had yet to submit formal applications.

If approved, the pair will join the two others who have left Nauru for Phnom Penh and stayed since Cambodia accepted a 30 million U.S. dollars aid package from Australia in September 2014 in exchange for taking in an unspecified number of the hundreds of refugees on the tiny island.

"Australia has informed us that two more people have volunteered to come to Cambodia," Sarin was quoted as saying by the Cambodia Daily.

"This is only unofficial information from Australia, and we have not yet received any official letter," he said, adding that he did not know the gender, age or nationality of the two volunteers, or whether they were related.

Only five of the refugees on Nauru have moved to Phnom Penh since Cambodia and Australia clinched the resettlement deal with a champagne toast at the Interior Ministry more than a year and a half ago. But three of them, a man from Myanmar and a married couple from Iran, have since opted to return home rather than stay in Cambodia.

 

source:XINHUA