Cumberland Mayor Steve Christou sends additional support to Berala’s multicultural communities

Cumberland Mayor Steve Christou strongly backed the council’s decision to provide additional aid to Berala’s ethnic communities, which remains one of the most affected COVID-19 areas in Sydney.

Cumberland City Council issued letters on Tuesday to more than 240,000 residents with NSW Health advice translated into 10 languages.

Speaking to ABC News, Steve Christou said Berala’s different ethnic communities “don’t necessarily have fluency with reading news through the internet, so we’ve provided this explanation letter in basic Mandarin, Cantonese, simplified Chinese, formal Arabic, Korean, Turkish, Farsi-Dari, Vietnamese, Tamil and Greek”.

The council explained that extra care was taken to provide correct translations, after the Federal and Victorian governments were criticised last year for errors in their translations in relation to materials distributed in relation to coronavirus.

Christou added that many of the council’s residents are from non English speaking backgrounds and, “if you know someone who needs help, maybe they are a friend or relative, please help them understand the importance of getting tested.”

NSW on Wednesday recorded four new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night. One is linked to the Berala cluster, and is the young man from western Sydney reported yesterday who travelled to western NSW. There are now 16 cases in the Berala cluster.

Health Minister Brad Hazzard urged leaders of the city’s multicultural southwest to step up and urge their communities to get tested at greater numbers.