A Portuguese kindergarten in Macau has no speech therapists and is having difficulty finding jobs.

The director of the kindergarten, D. José da Costa Nunez (DJCN), told Lusa that the Portuguese institution did not have speech therapists, and the facilities offered did not attract specialists from Portugal.

“The wages are not very attractive, and therefore I don’t see much interest on the part of the Portuguese to come here,” Carmelita Gomes, who heads the only institution in the territory with pre-school education from one and a half years only in Portuguese, said in an interview with Lusa Felizbina.

Apart from salaries, the person in charge believes that the inability to access the Resident Identification Card (BIR) is another restriction that is “really hurting” the import of Portuguese specialists.

Since August last year, Macau has not accepted new residence permit applications for Portuguese at the Immigration Service on the basis of “performing specialized technical functions”, allowing only the justification of family reunification or previous connection with the territory.

The new rules, which Lusa had access to, eliminate a practice that developed shortly after the move from Macau to China in 1999. An alternative for a Portuguese to guarantee a residence permit is to apply for recent programs to recruit qualified personnel.

Another hypothesis is the issuance of a “blue card” – an employment contract granted to non-resident workers without health and education benefits.

Felizbina Carmelita Gomez, who says she is in talks with the government to hire speech therapists through educational services (DJCN is part of the Free Public Education Network), acknowledged that the shortage of these professionals is a widespread problem in Macau and that in kindergartens in particular. “There are several children with this need.”

The group of 53 kindergarten workers needs “at least one” therapist, the person in charge said. Although this is not happening, support is being provided “through the Education Services”: “But of course it will not be supported very often,” he lamented.

Speaking to Lusa, Ronald Hoi Mang Hong, president of the Macau Association of Speech Therapists, said there are 81 registered speech therapists in the area of ​​about 681,000 residents.

Authorities hope that more young people will dedicate themselves to the sector and estimate that by 2025 there will be more than 100 speech therapists working in the Chinese region, the Ponto Final newspaper reported last July, citing Chinese channel Radio Macau. .

The D. José Costa Nunez Kindergarten, with 255 students, was created in 1933 as a public institution. In the 1998/99 school year, it became a private pre-school educational institution under the leadership of the Association for the Promotion of Learning Macaenses (APIM).