Supermarket workers
are to be given badges to identify them as immigrant-friendly so they
can be approached by those who want to practise their English.
Under
a bizarre scheme to be launched today, checkout staff at Asda and the
Co-op will be employed as ‘sympathetic listeners’ so those with poor
English can brush up their language skills.
More
than £6million of public money will be spent on new projects to coax
those who don’t speak English to finally learn the language.
Announcing
the plans, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles warned that those who
fail to speak English ‘are condemned to a limited life’.
Recent
census figures showed that across England 1.7 per cent of the
population - more than a million people - have either no, or poor spoken
English. That figure rises to 9 per cent in some London boroughs where
one in three inhabitants was born abroad.
Under
the plans, language classes will be held in mosques, churches and Sikh
gurdwaras in order to reach those people who have not got access to
language training.
Language
classes will be focused on practical themes, rather than classroom
English, so immigrants can learn how to engage with schools, hospitals
and other public services and how to discuss social activities such as
cooking and gardening.
Those
who are struggling will also be encouraged to help design their own
courses and local volunteers will be recruited to hold informal
conversations with those who a struggling.
A source at the
Department for Communities and Local Government said: ‘Training staff in
supermarkets to be ‘sympathetic listeners’ to encourage learners to
practise their English in-store - badges will make trained listeners
easily identifiable.’
That project will get the go ahead in outlets of Asda and Coop in Manchester and Yorkshire.
There
will also be new language projects in Birmingham, Leicester, Blackburn,
Bradford, Oldham, Sheffield, Rochdale, Bristol, Luton and Slough.
In
London 15 boroughs will be targeted: Brent, Camden, Ealing, Enfield,
Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Harrow, Hounslow, Lambeth,
Newham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Westminster.
The projects were selected after ministers were told that traditional English language classes are not always suited to the people who need them the most - such as those who are often socially and economically isolated by their lack of English.
2 comMENTS:
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I can only imagine that existing developed countries and economies would get a majority share of this pie and the rest would lose out due to factors and phenomena such as 'brain drain', amongs others.
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