Dear readers,
With nearly 20 million people infected with Covid-19
around the world, Australia is facing the biggest
challenge to stop the spread of the coronavirus before
it is uncontrollable. Victoria has entered stage 4
lockdown since 5 August. The city of Melbourne is
now empty with Victorians isolated with great fear. The
Prime Minister pleaded to stand with all Victorians.
Blessing CALD stand with Australians with different
cultural and linguistic background. We share with you
important Covid-19 information in your languages. Yes,
we came to Australia and we struck hard to integrate
into the mainstream but we should be supported to
receive important information in our familiar languages.
Simply translating Covid-19 information into different
languages and put it in the government websites is not
enough. People should not underestimate the difficulty
for people who know little English to find Covid-19
factsheets in Arabic or other languages immersed in
the vast information ocean of the Australian health
department website. Even someone is able to get it, the
biggest problem then is who will be distributing them to
the CALD communities?
The Acting Minister of Multicultural Affairs, Hon Alan
Tudge had asked for the support of CALD communities
and media to distribute these information. We have
seen many of the CALD communities did try their best
through social network and community media. But that
is not enough. The government should provide more
resources to support Covid-19 information distribution
among CALD communities.
In the beginning of the spread of Covid-19, the
government had spent in multilingual media advertising
preventive measures for Covid-19 and prepared the
CALD communities to fact the challenge. Now we
only have daily press conferences by the Premiers and
occasion broadcast by the Prime Minister and health
officials, and unfortunately all are in English.
We urge the government to fund the distribution of
these important information to the CALD communities
and keep them informed.
Supporting the CALD communities to be informed about
Covid-19.
Raymond Chow
Publisher, Blessing CALD