Haman police put migrant workers in driver's seat with lessons
Female foreign residents of Haman city in South Gyeongsang Province attend a driver's school hosted by the city police at the multicultural family support center in the city's Sanin-myeon district in March 2018. Haman Police Station
By Ko Dong-hwan
Police in the rural coastal city of Haman will launch a month-long driving course for migrant workers to help them understand traffic laws and prevent their possible deportation for breaking them.
Weekly one-hour classes will start Friday at the Islam Center in Joongam-ri village, in the city's Gunbuk-myeon district, in South Gyeongsang Province.
The police hope to enroll 40 workers in the course and they have prepared instruction books in Vietnamese, English, Chinese, Thai and Korean.
“We planned this driver's school to prevent the foreigners from transgressing the city's traffic bylaws as we have seen some of them driving without a Korean driver's license or driving under the influence of alcohol,” Lieutenant Cho Byung-rae, from the police foreign affairs bureau, told The Korea Times.
There are nearly 4,000 foreign migrants working for small and medium companies that are concentrated in the city.
“The city has been fairly free of serious clashes between Koreans and foreign residents,” said Cho, who transferred to the city from South Gyeongsang provincial police agency early this year. “Except local Koreans occasionally reporting to us about a group of drunken foreigners disrupting with loud noises at night, the town has been quite peaceful.”
The city started supporting foreigners interested in driving lessons years ago, hosting a driver's school for female migrants and immigrants. The Haman support center for multicultural families has been offering the annual class during the first half of the year.
“Haman has an ongoing initiative that a private driving school, designated by the National Police Agency, instructs the city's migrant workers at a lower-than-usual rate,” Cho said. “And Haman police plan to give foreigners interested in the course transport back and forth to the center.”