Govt Urged To Help Ethnic Minorities Learn Chinese

The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) is calling on the government to take concrete steps to improve the employment prospects of ethnic minorities, after a government report showed "alarming" levels of poverty among the city's non-Chinese residents.

The EOC said improving the employment potential of people from ethnic minorities is the key to lifting them out of poverty.

The equality watchdog said it is deeply concerned with the findings of the 2016 poverty situation report on ethnic minorities tabled last week, which showed that one in five people from ethnic minorities lived below the poverty line.

When government subsidies and allowances had been taken into account, the poverty rate was still higher than the rate for the general population.

EOC chairman, Alfred Chan, said it was particularly worrying that ethnic minorities' poverty could be characterised as working poverty.

He said, generally speaking, their lower incomes and poorer job prospects resulted from poorer education levels and skills, and inadequate Chinese language proficiency.

The commission reiterated the need for better support for ethnic minority children in learning Chinese at school, as well as measures to support skills and language acquisition when they enter the job market.

They called on the Labour Department to monitor Chinese proficiency requirements in job adverts, and for employers to be educated on setting appropriate requirements to avoid discrimination.

The EOC said the government should take the lead in promoting multi-cultural work forces, by reviewing language proficiency requirements for more civil service posts and making adjustments in the recruitment selection process.