XN000022-1972-11-23 — Page 5

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Thursday, November 23, 1972

TRAINED BLIND WORKERS SEEKING EMPLOYMENT

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The head of the newly-created Rehabilitation Division of the

Social Welfare Department, Mr. T.P. Khoo, today appealed to employers

in Hong Kong to engage trained blind staff for certain telephone and

typing jobs.

He said the Hong Kong Society for the Klind's Rotary Training

Centro in Shau Kei Wan had trained a number of blind for these tasks since

it began to function some years ago.

The training has included the operation of a telephone switch-

board, especially adapted to suit the blind, normal business conversation

in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin, and typing from a dictaphone.

Mr. Khoo said the Division's Liaison and Placement Unit had

assisted many of the centre's graduate trainees into jobs in hospitals,

voluntary agencies, government departments, commercial firms and factories

where they had proved to be "efficient, reiiable and conscientious," and

where they had "earned a good reputation for themselves and other trained

blind."

But of a group of five young blind graduates from a recent training

class, only two had so far been assisted into appropriate jobs, and the

other three are still waiting for employment.

Mr. Khoo urged employers to come forward and help in the employment

of blind workers.

Prospective employers should get in touch, in the first place, with

Mr. Paul Leung, Officer in charge of the Liaison and Placement Unit, telephone

K-419221, or H-707878.

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