Hong Kong bus company KMB holds first-ever recruitment event at mosque, community leader praises move
- Company’s non-Chinese bus drivers invited to share experiences with jobseekers at Kowloon Mosque and Islamic Centre
- City’s Muslim community lauded effort to engage people from different ethnic backgrounds
A major bus company in Hong Kong has hosted a recruitment event at a mosque for the first time, a move the city’s Muslim community has lauded as an effort to engage people from different ethnic backgrounds.
KMB was seeking to hire bus drivers, skilled assistants and bus stop wardens at the Kowloon Mosque and Islamic Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui on Saturday, with on-site interviews and road tests available for applicants.
The company’s non-Chinese bus captains were invited to share their experiences with jobseekers in seminars.
“It’s not just about employment in great firms, but more importantly it’s about letting the community know more about us as a part of society, as we’ve been here for five generations,” said Rizwan Ullah, general secretary of the Federation of Hong Kong Ethnic Communities, which helped organise the recruitment day.
KMB has 16 staff who are members of ethnic minority groups. Among them are 11 bus drivers, two technicians and three customer service representatives. Most of them joined the company in the past two years.
Mohammad Hussain, a 23-year-old bus driver trainee, said knowing there were members of ethnic minorities in the role he was pursuing had given him the confidence to apply last month.
Hussain said that after getting married he needed a steadier income than what his previous job as a food delivery driver provided. He applied to KMB upon the recommendation of his childhood friend Altaf Khan, 25, who had been working as a bus driver for eight months.
The new work environment did not raise language barriers for Hussain, who can understand Cantonese, but he said he did not have the confidence to speak the language.