Language service may cost £500K 17.04.08
Interpreters are being called out to translate for non-English speaking people in Northamptonshire about 21 times a day on average.
Figures revealed to the Chronicle & Echo under the Freedom of Information Act show the Community Access and Language Service (CALS) was called out 7,800 times between April 2007 and March 2008.
Brian Binley, the Conservative MP for Northampton South, said he was concerned about the cost of services, which could total £500,000.
And he added that he was worried that the number of people not speaking English would mean that community feeling would suffer.
Labour MP for Northampton North, Sally Keeble, said the overall level of use of interpreters seemed particularly high but stressed the importance of translation services.
She said: "On the one hand they should be learning English in this country, not just enough to get by but proficiently.
"But it is important that everyone has access to important services and that means being able to communicate properly."
The large Polish community in Northampton is reflected in 2,447 interpreting jobs in the past 12 months, by far the most numerous language, with Bengali, Russian and Somali also popular languages.
The figures also show asylum seekers in Northamptonshire are using translation services about once a day on average.
They reveal 369 requests for CALS were made by CALS' asylum seeker team in the last 12 months.
The figures suggest that more Afghan asylum seekers than any other nationality are using the translation service.
Requests by the asylum seeker team for someone fluent in Pashto, the predominant language in Afghanistan, totalled almost 150 in the last year.
There were also 68 requests made to CALS for a translator of Kurdish, the tongue of many Iraqis, or Kurdish-Sorani.
Source: Northampton Chronicle
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