DAB Ethnic Minorities Committee yesterday submitted to the Chief Executive Election candidate Mr. John Lee Ka-chiu a policy proposal on ethnic minorities’ concerns, including strengthening employment and education support, promoting the elimination of racial discrimination, and leading Hong Kong towards an inclusive society. Attendees included the chairman of the EMC 鄭泳舜 Vincent Cheng, advisor Derek Hung 孔昭華議員辦事處, and members, Rita Gurung, Muddassar Iqbal and Syed Mohiuddin Mohi.
Our Policy Proposals:
Support to Ethnic Minorities’ Activities in Community:
– Set up a working group to support local ethnic minorities’ communal activities.
– Lease government short-term vacant site at a nominal rent.
– Rent Housing Authority shop units to religious groups for their regular activities.
– Provide training to the frontline staff of the estate managers with EOC
Enhancement of Translation Quality and Accessibility to Public Services:
– Provide appropriate and accredited translation services to ethnic minorities in public and legal services.
– Operate qualification certifications and a regulatory body with government funding.
– Categorize general and professional interpretation.
Review of Employment Support to Ethnic Minorities:
– Conduct a census on the housing, household income, education level and employment status of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong.
– Review the effectiveness of “Racial Diversity Employment Programme”.
– Protect the labour right and welfare of self-employed workers, including delivery worker
– Improved the choices of ERB’s “Love Upgrading Special Scheme”
– Provide more training and retraining programmes in English
Improvement on Ethnic Minorities’ Chinese Learning Situations:
– Review current “Chinese Language Curriculum Second Language Learning Framework”.
– encourage schools to make good use of additional school subsidy.
– set up the DSE (Chinese) paper exclusively for non-Chinese students
Continuation of multi-language distribution of government information:
Information or webpages issued by the government should consistently include all major ethnic minorities’ languages. For instance, the Anti-epidemic webpage that calls on the public to get vaccinated provides eight ethnic minority languages. However, there is no multi-language version available on “Consumption Voucher Scheme”, “Love Upgrading Special Scheme”, ERB and Labour Department websites. The government should consider arranging for multiple-languages interface for all information websites.
Promotion of an inclusive and discrimination-free society
Under the COVID-19 epidemic, some stakeholders in our society have discriminated against ethnic minorities. The director of the Centre for Health Protection speculated that ethnic minorities are more susceptible to the spread of diseases due to cultural and religious factors. Even though current Chief Executive Carrie Lam later stressed that the government did not blame ethnic minorities for the spread of the epidemic, the future administration might continue to strengthen the promotion of the concept of a pluralistic society and racial inclusion to avoid such miscommunication occurrence.
#DAB #election #EthnicMinorities #HK #Policy #EMC