Asian unemployment and crime?
Getting money from Asian businesses is like drawing blood from stone. Yes – you know what I’m getting at, Asian businessmen didn’t become rich by lending money for sponsorship, let alone charitable causes. So I think Tarrique Ghaffur is being rather optimistic with his latest scheme. I got this note yesterday:
Since the bombings of 7 July 2005, the MPS has received many offers of help. I am asking the business sector to show their support by ‘signing up’ to become partners of Operation Quadrant, a long-term crime prevention initiative focusing on building confidence within the Asian community. We are asking businesses to pledge a donation of £250 for a partnership certificate, which we hope, you will proudly display within your organisation. All funds will be directed to the Safer London Foundation, to help set up long-term crime prevention and youth diversion projects.
…
My job as the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard and head of the Specialist Crime Directorate is to focus on crime prevention, gathering intelligence and catching the criminals. However, long-term solutions are needed to deal with the social and economic deprivation and the lack of ‘legitimate’ job opportunities.
It’s interesting that this is being billed as a community project as if Asian unemployment is different to others. In London this is primarily a problem in East London’s Tower Hamlets with the Bangladeshi community. I don’t really see a point to this? Maybe Mr Ghaffur wanted some money from the government, who turned around and said “Your Asian community keep having rich award ceremonies so why not ask them for money?“
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Filed in: Economics, Party politics
There is such widespread disparity btw unemployment figure across the asian categories.
Also the media (both asian and national) seem to focus upon the Bangladeshi community, they seem to be labelled so negatively by both media and govt.
Why?
Also, govt report of crime and unemployment are always flawed so many elements aren’t included.
And such reports tend to complement and favour political party objectives.
If the unemployment in the Bangladeshi community is as high as reported in the press then I can’t understans why the curry house lobby wants 10,000 work permits for Bangladeshi cooks to come to the UK. Surely they could train some of the unemployed people?
It is of course unfortunate for the Bangladeshi community to be labelled in this negative way. It should however wake people up and make them address the underlying problems and put in place initiatives to help the community. The African & Caribbean communities have done this successfully with Education and there was a marked improvement in GSCE results this year. It will be intresting to see if this helps African & Caribbean and job prospects.
i work in employment and education in tower hamlets, yes there are a multitude of jobs in curry houses but british born bangladeshi do not want these jobs, due to low pay and lack of prospects. through experience with working with ‘mainstream’ employers a lot of them won’t take seriously skills gained in bangladeshi restarants. incidently i worked in a carribean restarant, we had 2 italian and one filipino waiter and me (im afro carribean) we also had one scottish chef.