DAR ES SALAAM, 30 January 2007 (IRIN) - The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, plans to close down three camps in Tanzania in 2007 due to a drastic drop in the number of refugees in the country, an official said on Tuesday.

The UNHCR representative in Tanzania, Yacoub el Hillo, said refugee numbers had decreased from 500,000 in 2003 to 287,061 after 287,000 had been repatriated. However, he said, in the four years, UNHCR continued to receive refugees but in small numbers, hence the figure of 278,061 as at 1 January 2007.

"We are planning to close down Mtendeli and Mkugwa camps in the western Kibondo and Muyovosi districts and in the neighbouring Kasulu district," El Hillo told a news conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's commercial capital.

El Hillo said in early 2003, at least 500,000 people were in refugee camps in the northwestern part of the country but as of 1 January 2007, 287,000 refugees had been helped to return home under a voluntary repatriation scheme. Most of those who had gone home were from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), he said.

"It has been a remarkable achievement that the number of refugees has dropped so significantly within a few years," El Hillo said. "We are pleased to begin 2007 with such a positive trend."

He added that the agency's target was to help 75,000 Burundian and 48,000 Congolese refugees to return home in 2007.

"We are going to consolidate the camps because it would be meaningless to maintain those with very few people," El Hillo said. "However, the political and socio-economic situation would determine how the agency is going to achieve its 2007 target."

According to UNHCR, 18,561 Burundian refugees are at Mtendeli and 2,596 at Mkugwa are from Burundi and Rwanda. Another 20,000 Burundian refugees are at Muyovosi.

The agency's records also show that as of 1 January, there were 154,412 refugees from Burundi, 127,967 from the DRC, 194 from Rwanda, 2,402 mixed and 2,086 from Somalia.

The Tanzanian government also estimates that there were between 300,000 and 500,000 other refugees from Burundi and DRC who had settled in several villages in northwestern parts of the country over the years. Some are reported to have arrived in the early 1970s.