Lim Hock Chuan was Director of Operations in MHA when he was tasked to direct Operation Oriole. He was understandably apprehensive. Violence had erupted during such repatriation exercises in Malaysia and Hong Kong. Would this happen in Singapore?

Lim decided that Singapore would do things differently. There was a reason why the refugees in other places had put up a big fight: they had nothing to look forward to. “You’re repatriating them back to a place where they have no home, no job, no income, no friends, a very uncertain future,” said Lim.

“We wanted to give them a second chance when they go back...we decided that we’ll ask the government to give each person a $5,000 gift to help them resettle back into Vietnam...We thought it was a humane thing to do, ...and that removed the reasons for them to want to be violent, or for them to refuse to want to go back. And I think that is a key thing that we did, which the other countries did not do.”

This – and listening to the concerns of the refugees – was one of the creative management approaches that resulted in all of the refugees agreeing to voluntary repatriation, with no incident.