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 Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Adelaide Now
Sudan refugees plead for more support
MSUDANESE refugees in Australia have accused the Federal Government of failing to provide them with sufficient support to find work and establish themselves in their new communities.Mary Mamour, 37, who fled Sudan for Australia in 2003 but remains unemployed, said that, apart from English classes, there were few services available to her.
Ms Mamour, who lives in the western Sydney suburb of Blacktown with her three sons, said the support provided by Centrelink was undermined by the fact many refugees could not read or use a computer.
"We have many people who want jobs but they can't find them ... (they would) work for a chicken company or meat company, or any work - a cleaner," Ms Mamour said.
Blacktown is home to about 3000 refugees from Sudan, and NSW Labor MP Paul Gibson said many of their children had not previously been to school, yet were expected to survive in school here without sufficient support, such as transitional classes.
One of the architects of Australia's multicultural policy, Jerzy Zubrzycki, said black African refugees were at particular risk under the current administration. Arrivals from Africa are expected to account for about half Australia's 13,000 refugee and humanitarian intake in 2006-07, down from about 70per cent in 2004-05.
Like the influx of people from Lebanon after the outbreak of civil war in 1975, East African refugees are fleeing conflict and suffer cultural obstacles to their integration.
"Because we did not provide sufficiently for those who came in the 1970s and 1980s, we had the riots in Cronulla," said Professor Zubrzycki, a former immigration policy adviser to Liberal and Labor governments.
The federal Opposition has warned the Government against repeating the mistakes of the past in failing to provide sufficient support for refugees, or risk reaping "a bitter future harvest".
Opposition multicultural affairs spokesman Laurie Ferguson said inadequate support and the decision to concentrate large numbers of the refugees in a few urban areas had led to social dysfunction.
"The fact very few resources are provided to help in the settlement of refugees will form the basis for long-term social problems," he said.
But an Immigration Department spokesman said support for refugees now was "more streamlined, systematic and well-co-ordinated" than that provided in the 1970s.
The spokesman said refugees were provided with household goods, English classes, access to literacy and numeracy education and access to funding for other activities.
,No support ... Mary Mamour, a Sudanese refugee, says the Australian Government doesn't do enough to help refugees establish themselves in their new communities. Picture: James Croucher / News Limited newspapers
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Mohamed Omer
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست