YTDIST promotes fight crime messages
Yau Tsim District (YTDIST) sought to bring home the fight crime messages to over 700 non-ethnic Chinese (NEC) parents and children at a seminar cum variety show on November 10. This event was a multi-agency collaboration involving the Yau Tsim Mong District Fight Crime Committee, District Council, District Office, five non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and numerous NEC organisations.
To show their full support for YTDIST's initiative, NEC community leaders not only attended the event themselves but also mobilised their community members to follow suit.
In his welcome speech, YTDIST Commander Chung Hung-fung emphasised that to tackle drug abuse by youth, and crimes, the police must work in partnership with the local community, including the NEC, schools and NGOs, to enhance communication and co-operation across communities. He also took the opportunity to present appreciation letters to eight NEC volunteers who worked as communicators for their own ethnic community members at the Police Information Booths set up for crowd management operations on July 1 and October 1 this year.
Removing language barriers
Meanwhile, YTDIST is running more language courses in Urdu for frontline officers in a bid to remove the language barriers between the officers and the ethnic minorities, as well as the communication problems the officers encounter in their job.As Urdu is a native language commonly used in India, Pakistan and some Islamic countries, YTDIST started running two five-month courses on this language last month.
On the first day of the course, YTDIST Commander, Acting Chief Superintendent So Kam-sing, reminded the participants: "The success of the Force in gaining support and trust from the public depends very much on the performance and professional standard of frontline officers. According to recent public opinion surveys, the service that the Force provides to the public has received very favourable responses, indicating that our high-quality service has won recognition from the public. It is hoped that the course in Urdu would better equip our frontline officers for dealing with NEC, overcoming language barriers and preventing unnecessary misunderstanding caused by different cultural backgrounds, ways of life and languages.
"I hope that all officers would work hard to complete the course and that the course would help them provide better and more professional services," he added.
Local and NEC communities fully support Yau Tsim's anti-drug initiative