Anna Lo MLA said: “The Office of the First and Deputy First Minister needs to bring forward their Cohesion, Sharing and Integration strategy as a matter of urgency. Given the sad events of the past week or so, people are demanding an updated and pro-active strategy to tackle racism and other forms of prejudice.
“We need this strategy now – at the moment organisations promoting community relations are in limbo because they have been expecting a new strategy for a long time now, but nothing has emerged.
“OFMDFM must redouble their efforts in order to help provide voluntary and community organisations with more funding to work to stop prejudiced behaviour early and at its root cause.
“We need decisive leadership following recent events. We cannot afford to have a government sleepwalking into another crisis.
“It’s not good enough to simply condemn racist attacks – we need a robust strategy in place to stop the seeds of prejudice being sown in the first place. There can be no excuse for OFMDFM to continue to delay the CSI policy.”
ENDS