The Dunedin City Council’s New to Dunedin sections of its website have been translated into Arabic, Farsi and Chinese.
Council events and community development manager Joy Gunn said while new settlers were supported by several agencies, there was not information in their own language that was easily accessible.
‘‘We really looked at trying to provide something that people new to Dunedin could easily access, and that they could access on their own rather than needing someone to support them to do that all the time.’’
The pages include information on a range of things, from how to get around the city to education and employment opportunities.
Farsi and Arabic were added to help the city’s refugee population, and Mandarin was added because of Dunedin’s large Chinese population.
The project has taken about a year, and included focus groups with members of the refugee community, support agencies, and Dunedin’s Multi-Ethnic Council.
‘‘Their needs really defined the information on the pages.’’
The pages went live in December.
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Another waste of our rates by the DCC promoting a counter-intuitive policy. Are not immigrants supposed to learn English and integrate? And before you judge me, I speak 3 languages (and smatterings of another 4 languages) and a child of refugees. So get real and encourage integration- we do not need urban ghettos that exist in many of the world's big cities because immigrants have not integrated or bothered to learn the local language. If you do not want to learn English, then why are you here? what can you contribute to Dunedin or NZ if you can not communicate with the 'locals'?
no options for maori language i see