10 January 2010

Financial tsunami has brought real challenges to different sectors in Hong Kong in last year. South Asians, as part of Hong Kong, are without doubt inescapable from its sweeping effects. Hong Kong Christian Service, Ethnic Minority Services successfully interviewed 219 males of Pakistani, Nepalese, Indian and Bangladeshi ethnicities in September to November 2009 by questionnaires to explore the influences of financial tsunami on this specific group. Alarming number of South Asian males were found of facing huge crisis in their psychological, physical as well as family and social well beings.   

From the research, a disturbing amount of respondents reported losing their jobs after the financial tsunami. The unemployment rate of the respondents increased from 20.3% to 24.3% before and after the financial tsunami.  Those who fortunately kept their jobs claimed to have an increasing workload (42.2%), longer work hour (36.1%) but fewer wages (33.5%). Playing the traditional role as bread winners of their families, greater amount of the respondents earned less and seemed difficult to support their daily livings. The number of respondents whose monthly income was less than $5,001 increased from 13% to 20.1% before and after the incident whilst the median monthly employment earning was $10,500 in third quarter for the general population. Besides, the number of respondents on CSSA was doubled (from 7.8% to 16.7%) after the incident.

“Feeling stressful” (45.7%), “Face financial difficulty in family” (40.6%) and “Go out less with family members” (32.9%) were the most common influences reported by the respondents. Other influences included “Affect physical health (such as always feel tired)” (31.1%), “Less communication with family members” (27.4%) and “Cannot sleep” (17.8%). Some were found looking for outlet by drinking alcohol (15.1%) and gambling (7.8%). In order to tackle the critical effects brought by the financial tsunami, many of them reduced their social and religious activities that were significant for the majority of ethnic minorities to maintain their informal supportive network regarding their insufficient connection with formal support provided by the Government and NGOs (only 13.2% of the respondents sought help from the Government and NGOs though 65.4% of them reported this as an effective response). It was found that frequency of joining family gathering dropped for 32.9% of the respondents, 25.6% cut the frequency of inviting relatives and family members to have meal at home or join their family activities, and 20.5% reduced the frequency of joining religious activities. However, the above measures were reported of “sometimes effective but sometimes not” (49.2%).

The research found that 39.1% of the respondents were feeling hopeless, depressed, disappointed, sad, stressed, scared and frustrated. Besides, 30.7% felt themselves as useless and inferior, 24.2% reported having more conflicts with their family members and 16.7% mentioned about consequences on their physical health like sleeplessness, loss of appetite, tiredness and headache etc. Those respondents whose wives needed to go out to work due to financial tsunami had even larger opportunity of suffering from emotional and physical distresses. Without effective help, the depressive symptoms and family disturbances of South Asian males can get worse and finally explode to greater society problems.

Ms. Karrie Chan, Principal Coordinator of Ethnic Minority Services, Hong Kong Christian Service said a Nepalese respondent told her that he became unemployed after the financial tsunami and had been constantly jobless for a year. Even though he tried to find some part-time job to support his family. Part-time vacancies also dropped dramatically.

She also said a jobless young Pakistani respondent also expressed that he was blamed by his parents and had more conflicts with them because of the jobless situation due to financial tsunami. It was very stressful to him as they thought he was sitting at home and wasting time.

Karrie worry that South Asian men would suffer from greater psychological burden if the situations continue to worsen. Considering the ineffectiveness of their responses to financial tsunami and the influences of their traditional role and norms of being the in-charge of their families. Their own frustration had turned out creating greater tension between their families and them. Finally it will become greater crisis of Hong Kong society. Thus she urged the Government to take appropriate and timely assistance before the crisis hits.

Hence, the Agency recommended that:

1. The Government should take more active measures to tackle the unemployment issue of South Asian males

Possible actions include enhancing the sensitivity and the incentive of local employers to recruit ethnic minorities, as well as establishing platforms other than the Labour Department for connecting potential employers and ethnic minority job seekers such as a respective webpage. Considering the difficulties for many ethnic minorities, especially new arrivals, to afford fees for accreditation of their qualifications, positive measures could be taken to waive part of or even full payment of the respective charges. Together with the development of more skills training courses suitable for not only the less-educated ethnic minorities but also those more highly-educated, it could possibly bring more job opportunities for ethnic minorities.

2. Open more channels for ethnic minorities to easy access useful services information

In protecting their basic rights of access to social services and encouraging them to seek timely services from the Government and NGOs, useful services information should be given out in ways and channels that ethnic minorities could easily obtain access. For example, information could be printed in English and in native languages of ethnic minorities, connections could be built up with ethnic minorities groups and media in dispatching the information, setting up a  multi-languages Government webpage to ensure essential information could be read by ethnic minorities as well as making use of Government district facilities like community halls, recreational halls and HAD offices to provide user-friendly services in accessing computers to search for social services and job information.

3. Culturally sensitive and male-role sensitive services should be developed to meet the needs of South Asian males

Service providers should be aware of the cultural and social needs of South Asian males as well as operating services in a more flexible mode to suit the living pattern of the males, such as provision of specialized hotline services, recruitment of trained South Asian males to help in engaging and helping their fellow counterparts, and formation of peer support network among them, etc. Apart from offering tangible help and assistance on their emotional disturbances, family-life education and parenting education could strengthen South Asian males’ skills in handling family-problems.

Media Enquires

• Miss Wong, Project Manager, Home Improvement Project, Hong Kong Christian Service
  Tel: 2777-8179
• Ms Cindy HO, Information Officer, Hong Kong Christian Service
  Tel: 2731-6263