Hong Kong Unison, a non-profit organisation that has served the city’s ethnic minorities for over two decades, is planning to disband, its chairperson has told HKFP.
Alice Chong, chair of Unison, said on Monday that the NGO’s executive committee was considering shutting down the organisation and that a general meeting would be held this Friday to allow members to discuss and vote on the dissolution.
“The consideration is not due to financial reasons or political pressure,” Chong told HKFP in Cantonese. “It is more that the historical mission of Unison has been completed after 24 years working for ethnic minorities.”
Hong Kong has seen more NGOs serving ethnic minorities now, compared with the early 2000s, Chong said when asked to clarify about the “complete” mission.
“And the government has been allocating more resources to this field too,” she added.
The chairperson added that, if Unison was to close down, the executive committee would make sure that “all of its resources” would be transferred to other local groups that have a mission similar to Unison.
Ming Pao reported on Tuesday morning, citing sources, that Unison planned to disband.
24 years of history
Unison was founded by registered social worker Fermi Wong in 2001. According to a 2017 interview with Initium Media, Wong established the NGO when Hong Kong had few organisations serving ethnic minorities, such as ethnic Indian, Nepali, and Pakistani.
See also: Interview: Social worker Fermi Wong decries ‘narrow nationalism’ and fake refugee scares in Hong Kong [From 2016]
She not only helped low-income ethnic minorities learn Cantonese, seek jobs, look for schools, and attend court hearings, but she was also involved in advocacies and lobbying against racial discrimination.
Hong Kong did not have any legislation against racial discrimination until the Race Discrimination Ordinance was enacted in 2008.
Wong left Unison in 2013 due to health issues and became a volunteer for the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in 2014. She has since migrated to the UK, as reported by Green Bean Media.
According to Unison’s website, the organisation currently has six staff members, and is governed by a board of seven executive committee members.
The number of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong – excluding foreign domestic helpers –surged more than 50 per cent within a decade, from around 197,000 in 2011 to more than 301,000 in 2021.
According to the 2021 data, ethnic minorities comprised only 4.3 per cent of the city’s population. South Asians were the largest group, with 96,500 persons – led by Indians (40 per cent), followed by Nepalese (31 per cent), Pakistanis (25 per cent), and Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans (4 per cent).
The Home Affairs Department is currently funding local NGOs to run 10 Support Service Centres for Ethnic Minorities, with each centre receiving HK$10 million in the 2023-24 financial year. Unison is not one of the NGOs that receive the funding.
Last year, the government announced that it would set up 10 ethnic minority care teams in those 10 centres, allocating an additional HK$1.45 million to each centre annually.
