The South African government is reported to have decided to set up a number of refugee camps for foreign migrant workers who have fled the recent wave of anti-immigrant violence.
A government spokesman said the country's cabinet was meeting today to discuss an action plan to help victims of the violence, but that no official announcement was likely until tomorrow.
However, public radio reported ministers would approve plans to set up seven giant camps which would house some 30,000 people who have been displaced.
Aid agencies had urged a national response from the South African government to aid the displaced.
'This is a refugee crisis and it is unattended,' Muriel Cornelius of Médecins Sans Frontières said yesterday.
She said the lack of an orchestrated government response threatened to worsen the plight of those displaced, some of whom sleep outside in near freezing temperatures.
Doctors and nurses reported an array of respiratory infections, diarrhoea and other opportunistic diseases, in overcrowded shelters and camps, posing a risk of wider outbreaks.
South African President Thabo Mbeki who is in Japan for a conference on African development, has come under fire for his response to the crisis.
A televised national address on Sunday night in which Mr Mbeki described the attacks as a source of shame failed to silence critics who have pointed out that he has still to visit any of the affected areas.
African migrants from around the continent have been targeted in a wave of attacks in South Africa that have killed dozens of foreign workers and displaced tens of thousands.
The crisis has also prompted thousands to return home. At least 50,000 Mozambicans and Zimbabweans have left South Africa since the attacks, which have now subsided, began on 11 May.
Smaller numbers have gone back to Zambia and Malawi. Zimbabweans are the largest immigrant group in South Africa, accounting for an estimated 60% of the 5m migrants in a country of about 50m.
The bloodshed and subsequent exodus is embarrassing to a country that has prided itself on welcoming immigrants and asylum seekers, and officials are taking steps to reintegrate migrants back into the community.
While some have accepted the offer, others say they are too scared to do so.
'We will be killed by our neighbours,' said Ndubula Joelle, a pregnant mother of two from the Democratic Republic of Congo camped in the courtyard of a police station in Johannesburg. 'They will cut my baby out. They told me.'
