The City of Richmond's Newcomer's Guide is now available in Punjabi.
Mayor Malcolm Brodie helped launch the guide last week, which is published with the help of the Richmond Intercultural Advisory Committee (RIAC).
Punjabi is the fourth language in which the guide has been published, following the release in recent years in Chinese, English and Filipino.
The guide provides new Richmond residents with an upto-date, central information source at their fingertips, informing them about the city in general, local government and services provided by different organizations.
"The City of Richmond is always happy to welcome new residents and the Newcomers Guide is an important tool to help people settle in," said Brodie in a press release.
"We are glad to present the Punjabi edition of the guide as, according to the 2011 Census, nearly 6,000 of Richmond residents have Punjabi as their mother tongue."
Punjabi is the fifth largest language group in the city after English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Filipino. The Punjabi version of the guide is a project resulting from one of the recommendations of RIAC's 2013 Work Program, which was adopted by city council earlier this year.
Richmond has a growing number of new residents and introducing the guide in different languages will make for a smoother transition into the community, claims the city.
"This guide is a project our whole community can be very proud of," said Lawrence Lim, RIAC member and chair of the Newcomer's Guide sub-committee. "We're delighted to have this resource available for our new neighbours who speak Punjabi, and we are sure they will find it very useful as they settle into their new community."
The guides can be found online at www.richmond.ca/discover/about/newcomersguide.
The Richmond Public Library has computers available with Internet access, free of charge.
