On 23 September, Mr. J S Lam, a retired police senior superintendent, was invited to speak before a group of ethnic minority (EM) youth who are interested in joining the Police Force.

Now a newspaper columnist, Mr. Lam has echoed our concern and advocated for the recruitment of EM officers by the Police Force. He considered the facts that “there have been no non-local Chinese recruits joining the Police Force since the handover”, and “the eventual loss of racial diversity” is something to be mourned.

During the meeting, Mr. Lam has encouraged our EM youth to adopt a positive attitude and not to consider themselves “inferior” than the Chinese applicants when applying for the Police Force. Besides sharing his experience, he also gave the participants some tips for their application, for instances, they should prepare well for physical fitness test, and portraying a “sunshine” appearance when attending the interview.

Hong Kong Unison would continue arrange similar kinds of activities in future. For those EM youth interested in joining the Police or other disciplinary forces, such as Fire Services or Correctional Services, please feel free to call 2789 3246 for further information and advice.

Some background information about application to the Police Force

Why cops needs cultural diversity By JS Lam

On 22 September, our project officer, Mr. Alan Din spoke before a group of Nepalese and Pakistani people attending the employment retraining class in Yuen Long on the Race Discrimination Ordinance (RDO).

Since the enactment of the RDO in July 2009, Hong Kong Unison has actively participated in the community education on this important piece of new law. Our aim is to enable the participants to have a basic understanding about the law, including their rights and its complaint channel. Since last August, we have organized a total of 10 workshops, in which over 320 people have attended. Our participants came from a variety of ethnic background and they include Nepalese, Pakistanis, Indians, Filipinos, Indonesians, Thais, Egyptians, Nigerians and Cameroons etc.

Generally speaking, we found the awareness of our EM people towards the RDO is still very low. Each time we organized the workshop, almost all the participants admitted that they had not heard about the RDO, or its enforcement body, i.e., the Equal Opportunities Commission. For those heard about it, they had no idea of what it is about. Obviously more ground work needed to be done.

Hong Kong Unison will continue contribute to community education on the RDO. Just give us a call if you want to know more about the law or arrange a workshop. We are ready to offer assistance. For enquires, call Mr. Alan Din at 2789 3246.

On 17 September, our new Board member, Mr. Stephen Fisher spoke on inclusive education for ethnic minority (EM) students, during a forum held in the Hong Kong Institute of Education(HKIEd). About 100 people, including government officials, education scholars, social welfare practitioners, teachers and students in HKIEd attended the forum, in which Professor Dennis McLennan, Chair Professor of Educational Psychology was the co-speaker.

It was the first time that the former Director of Social Welfare spoke publicly in the capacity of Unison's board member. During his speech, Mr. Fisher stressed that the mother tongue education policy had put our EM students in an inferior position, given Chinese is not their mother language. Consequentially our EM students have been disproportionately allocated to poorer banding schools, thus affecting their future.

Both Mr. Fisher and Prof McLennan agreed the Government should take measures to assist our EM students overcoming their language barriers. In particular, Mr. Fisher has iterated the need of providing Chinese as a second language curriculum, to help students picking up their Chinese on a gradual basis. In addition, Chinese learning immersion classes should be provided to enable students upgrading their Chinese, before they were integrated to mainstream schools.

Click here for some video clips about the forum