THE City of Richmond along with the Richmond Intercultural Advisory Committee (RIAC) on Thursday presented a new Punjabi language version of the popular Newcomers Guide. Punjabi is the fourth language in which the popular resource document is now available. The Newcomers Guide provides new Richmond residents with an up-to-date, central information source at their fingertips, informing them about the city in general, local government and services provided by different organizations.
“The City of Richmond is always happy to welcome new residents and the Newcomers Guide is an important tool to help people settle in,” said Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie. “We are glad to present the Punjabi edition of the guide as according to the 2011 Census, nearly 6,000 of Richmond residents have Punjabi as their mother tongue.”
Punjabi is the fifth largest language group in the city after English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Filipino. The Punjabi version of the Newcomers Guide is a project that resulted from one of the recommendations of the Richmond Intercultural Advisory Committee’s 2013 Work Program, which was adopted by Council earlier this year. Richmond has a growing number of new residents and introducing the Newcomers Guide in different languages will make for a smoother transition into our community.
“This Guide is a project our whole community can be very proud of,” said Lawrence Lim, Richmond Intercultural Advisory Committee member and Chair of the Newcomer’s Guide sub-committee. “We’re delighted to have this resource available for our new neighbours who speak Punjabi and we are sure they will find it very useful as they settle into their new community.”
The Guide is now available in four languages: English, Chinese, Filipino and Punjabi. These guides can be found online at:
www.richmond.ca/discover/about/newcomersguide.
The Richmond Public Library has computers available with internet access, free of charge.
