ASYLUM seekers will have to carry identity cards containing their photograph and fingerprint data as a replacement for the hated voucher system, Home Secretary David Blunkett announced yesterday.

The Government is to build four accommodation centres to hold 3,000 asylum applicants with access to doctors, education and legal advice.

No sites have yet been identified.

If the £250m project is successful, about 30,000 asylum seekers could eventually be held in similar centres to ease the problems generated by the dispersal system, which moves refugees to towns and cities across the UK in a bid to ease pressure on public services in London and the South-East.

Mr Blunkett said the system would remain in force, but would be improved to provide better support to asylum seekers.

The voucher scheme will be scrapped by autumn 2002. In the meantime, the money paid to each refugee will be increased from £10 to £14 a week.

The development comes as a ferry company reviews its security procedures after 35 asylum seekers entered a North-East port in less than a week.

Concerns have been raised that refugees being smuggled from Belgium to Teesside in freight containers could die before they reach safety.

Ten refugees - including two children - were discovered in a freight ferry at Teesport on Sunday night, and were handed over to immigration officials.

Last Friday, six Turkish Kurds and one Iranian were found in a sealed container, just two days after 19 Kurds - two babies among them - stowed away in a similar fashion.

P and O North Sea ferries, which ships freight from Zeebrugge to Teesport, is to tighten up security in Belgium in a bid to stop refugees coming through.

Mark Evans, a freight manager for the company, said it was a constant worry what his staff might find in the containers.

He said: "For every refugee that gets through, there are a lot more that we stop.

"I don't think Teesport is being targeted. To be honest, I don't think the refugees know where they will come out, they just know it is England."

Pete Widlinski, of the North of England Refugee Service, which helps asylum seekers until their applications have been processed, said: "It is very dangerous. The 19 refu-gees that came in on Wednesday were in a very bad way.

"It is very difficult to say whether human traffickers are targeting Teesport. It is a possibility.