Press Room
Multi-Lingual
Consultation Papers needed for
Realization of Social Inclusion of All Races
19 October 2004
A local social service organisation which concerned the welfare of ethnic minority groups, Hong Kong Christian Service together with numerous minorities members who wore their racial costumes, raise the slogan of their languages to show their concern on inadequate language version of consultation paper and opportunities to voice their opinion in the front gate of the Government Secretariat today.
The organisation said “The consultation exercise aiming at ameliorating racial discrimination is itself not socially inclusive. They said that “Although the Government did publish pamphlets in various languages introducing the main points of the proposals, the ethnic minority groups are entitled to read the full paper in their language in order to have an opportunity to understand fully beyond any doubt.”
They doubted whether the consultation paper could get the feedback from the real users. Hong Kong Christian Service said that they have received concerns to the consultation paper from their service users but they also expressed their difficulty to know and understand what are proposed in the consultation paper, because the consultation paper is only published in Chinese and English, and neither English nor Chinese is their mother tone. As a result, it will not be unexpected if the feedback on this consultation paper at the end from minority groups is minimal.
Thus, Hong Kong Christian Service strongly urged the Government should take proactive promotional effort to facilitate the needs of the real users and consider the following remedial measures:
- To publish as soon as possible the full consultation paper ‘Legislating Against Racial Discrimination’ in multi-lingual versions according to the variety of the principal ethnic minority groups, e.g. Tagalog (Philippines), Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesia), Hindi (India), Thai (Thailand), Japanese (Japan), Nepali (Nepal), Urdu (Pakistan), Bengali (Bangladesh), Sinhalese (Sri Lanka), Korean (Korea), Vietnamese (Vietnam), and other languages deemed to be necessary.
- To use more proactive methods to publicize this consultation to the ethnic minority groups. For example, the Government can advertise on those newspapers published in their own languages, to advertise APIs in their languages on English TV channels, to distribute the pamphlets at their usual gathering points such as at temples every Friday, and make use of their existing effective communication channels to distribute the message.
- To organise Briefing and Public Hearing sessions respectively for each of the principal ethnic minority groups, i.e. Filipinos, Indonesians, British, Indians, Thais, Japanese, Nepalese, and Pakistanis, using their own mother language as the major language in the sessions respectively. These sessions should be held at the communities their inhabitation clustered.
And, taking into consideration the extra time required by the Government to produce the above language versions and for the ethnic minority groups to have sufficient time to digest and give feedback, the organisation also said that the consultation period should extend for 3 months, i.e. until the end of March 2005.
Media Enquires
- Ms Cindy HO
Information Officer
Hong Kong Christian Service
Tel: 2731-6263