The Mayor of Maribyrnong initially announced that the City Council would be giving permit refunds and 50% discounts on rates for local businesses. In the Economic Development team’s regular catch-ups with Regulatory Services at the beginning of COVID-19 it became clear there were very few businesses who had applied so the City Council disseminated information via email and daily newsletters to the businesses to notify them of the financial support available to them. At that time the state and federal government had not translated info about their support services such as JobKeeper and the Business Support Fund from state government.
After a week a letter went into circulation in Vietnamese written by FABA. A Vietnamese speaking accountant offered to take phone calls to explain the letter in Vietnamese. The letter also included our Business District Officer’s name and number, she started receiving a lot of phone calls from Vietnamese traders so contacted local laws for a discussion around the gaps in CALD traders, specifically with the Ethiopian and Somali traders.
The City Council then translated the letter into other languages. Initially the translations that were decided upon were Hindi, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, Amharic, Tigrinya, Somali, English. Afterwards adding Oromo based off a traders recommendation who walked around and passed the message on to traders who spoke Oromo. Once the letters were translated it was distributed internally and externally, in person through the environmental health officers and online.
The message about discounted rates was also sent out with rates notices, although with commercial properties it depends on the leasing agreement, some landlords pass on messages to their tenancy and that's a part of the lease.
