57 per cent of Hong Kong’s ethnic minority children with special needs stop attending school

The high school dropout rate among local ethnic minorities highlights the increasing exclusion of the city's non-Chinese in the general community, which leads to a downward cycle of higher crime and poverty rates, the first comprehensive analysis on the status of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong revealed.

In a city with a dwindling general birthrate and fast ageing population, the answer could lie in Hong Kong's ethnic minorities becoming a source of manpower to replenish the workforce. However, rights advocates point out that lack of access to even basic public and social services such as education and equal opportunities in employment is crippling a whole generation.

"What's most shocking ... is the fact that this is our future. The most productive population of Hong Kong in the coming 20 years is going to be the ethnic minority population. And the population that is going to be ageing, retiring, in need of care ... is the Hong Kong-Chinese population," said Puja Kapai, associate professor of law. "So you've got a problem, we've got the resources, but we're not preparing our young people to be able to contribute to Hong Kong."

Kapai did the research analysis for the University of Hong Kong's Centre for Comparative and Public Law after it was commissioned by the Zubin Foundation, a local NGO.

"What struck me the most was not only that the situation was not getting better, but it was getting worse," Equal Opportunities Commission chairperson Dr York Chow Yat-ngok said on the panel discussion at the report's launch yesterday.

About 40 per cent of the local Pakistani population and 20 per cent of the Indian and Nepalese populations are under 15 years old - much higher than the 12 per cent of ethnic Chinese in the city, the report said, quoting the 2011 Census. In 2011, ethnic minorities made up 6.4 per cent of the Hong Kong population.