A job ad for Indian workers has sparked fury among locals in the New South Wales town of Griffith, where a roundabout was recently renamed in Punjabi after lobbying from Sikh immigrants.
The ad stuck on the window of Pizza Monster, located on the town’s main street, stated: “Hiring full-time employees, Indian boy or girl, fluent in English, paid training provided, reasonable wages, friendly staff.”
The advertisement sparked anger among the community, and the fast food business has now apologised and removed the poster.
“It’s disgusting, it’s a new business in Griffith and the owners feel entitled to come here and hire only their own; excluding the locals who have built this city into what it is today. To them, all it is is a convenient money maker that they’ve just stumbled into,” one resident told Noticer News.
“If you’re going to come to my home, then the least you can do is give the people actually from here a fair go and to pay proper wages.
“If your business won’t survive that way here maybe your business is better suited to India.”
Other locals made similar comments on social media, with one saying: “But if we wrote an ad that said “Aussie Boy or Girl” we’d be crucified.”
“I have said it for ages give it 10 years and we will have a Indian prime minister you watch,” said a Facebook user.
“Well, Albo imported 600,000 of them,” wrote another.
A worker at the store told Noticer News they were “very sorry” about the ad, and said it was poorly phrased due to a “language barrier” and should have specified that fluency in Hindi or Punjabi was required.
“Most of our customers speak Punjabi, we didn’t mean to offend anyone,” the worker said.
The ad comes after Griffith City Council renamed a roundabout at the intersection of Thorne Road and Kidman Way, that had been called Forlico Corner by locals for 50 years in honour of the pioneering Forlico family, Khalsa Chowk, which means “pure junction” in Punjabi.
The initiative was supported by former councillor Manjit Singh Lally, the only Sikh to have served on the Griffith City Council, and the new name was approved in December, and a sign erected last month, despite Sikhs being just 3.4% of the town’s population of 27,090 at the time of the 2021 Census.
The total Indian-born population was 7%, while 8.4% gave their ancestry as Indian, Punjabi, or other Indian subcontinent (not including Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka).
The president of the British Australian Community, Australia’s largest Anglo-Celtic advocacy group, told Noticer News last month the renaming was yet another example of immigrants from non-European backgrounds trying to “stamp their own identities” onto Australia’s history and culture.
Header image: The job ad (Supplied).
