Covid-19 awareness: Govt reaching out in multiple languages
Qatar, a melting pot of several languages and communities, is winning praise for its innovative and inclusive awareness campaigns against the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). The country has reached out to various communities in their mother tongues.
The Ministry of Interior (MoI) is giving updates in 10 languages through social media platforms. Apart from Arabic and English, videos and posters are set up and circulated in Urdu, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Nepali, Filipino, Sinhalese and Bengali.
HE the Spokesperson of the Supreme Committee for Crisis Management Lolwah bint Rashid bin Mohamed AlKhater, during a special interview to Al Araby TV, noted that Qatar is known for the cultural diversity with the presence of various communities and everyone receives services and care without any exception and discrimination.
She explained that the country hands out messages in various languages in order to ensure proper communication and awareness.
To add to this, the Government Communications Office (GCO) has launched a Coronavirus Information Service on WhatsApp in six languages: Arabic, English, Urdu, Hindi, Nepali, and Malayalam.
The new service, which is free-to-use, provides a central source of accurate, trustworthy and up-to-date information about Covid-19.
The automated ‘chatbot’ service allows citizens and residents to get answers to the most common questions about coronavirus from the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and the GCO, 24 hours.
Meanwhile, various community organisations have praised the government for carrying out the awareness activities in an inclusive manner taking the opinions of the communities into account.
“We were approached by the government to become part of the efforts to spread awareness. And we are glad to discharge our part by joining hands with the ministries,” said Indian Community Benevolent Forum (ICBF) president P N Baburajan.
He said that messages of community leaders are recorded and are disseminated by the government to the members. Apart from social media platforms, MoI is making use of media including newspapers, online portals and radio channels to spread awareness in various languages.
Adeel Akbar, general secretary of Pakistan Art Society-Qatar, praised the government saying Qatar is keen to ensure the involvement of community leadership in the campaigns.
“The government is showing a humane approach while giving care and ensuring welfare during the crisis. The authorities keep in touch with the community leadership and we receive dayto-day updates. Besides, they take our opinion into consideration in order to improve the services,” he added.