African leader to ask Queensland Premier for help at election debate

The president of Queensland’s African Communities Council will make a direct appeal to the Premier and her opposition counterpart to help migrants who need welfare at Monday night's first leaders' debate ahead of the 2020 state election.

Sudanese-born Beny Bol, who represents the 60,000 members of QACC, says about 99 per cent of new African migrants are isolated in their homes, without the skills or English to ask for help or take part in the welfare system.

“We have a newly emerging community and the majority of them are not engaging with the system,” Mr Bol said.

“A lot of them are not going to knock on the doors of the service providers and ask for help.

“We need to come up with a more strategically targeted program to reach out to the grassroots.”

The group is part of the Queensland Community Alliance, which will ask Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington at the first 2020 election debate on Monday for an extra $14.5 million each year for new community neighbourhood centres.

“At the moment there is limited funding and we need to hire more community workers to work at the centres,” Mr Bol said.

“They need to have long-term funding for the centres and we need to make sure they are helping the communities they are designed for.”

Mr Bol said his recent experience was that service providers acted as if the non-English speaking community should come to them.

“They do not have the skills or the knowledge or language competency to come and speak to the service providers,” he said.

Mr Bol said there needed to be a complete rethink of getting assistance to the non-English-speaking, grassroots communities.

“In my African community there is about 1 per cent of the community – maybe 1 per cent of our community members – who engage with the system,” he said.

“But 99 per cent are just in their own homes struggling and isolated, complaining about the system, complaining about assistance and having no idea of how to go about it.”

Mr Bol said his experience as an African community leader showed some assistance providers spent “too much time meeting the criteria of funding” and too little time with grassroots families struggling with English.

Queensland’s first state election debate of 2020 will be held via video-conference software Zoom.

The QCA has collected the views of 1000 Queenslanders as the state prepares to vote on October 31.

In July, the QCA proposed a “Maroonprint” for Queensland’s economic recovery.

The debate begins at 6.30pm and will run until 8.30pm.