![Now what?: Gymea's Migrant Servuice will close at the end of the month after losing funding and clients Vuolit Girgis [right], Ajang Biar and Luisa Morton are angry. Picture: Chris Lane.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/cc05b560-3d36-495f-980e-8dd351765428.jpg/r0_0_4050_2700_w576_h298_fmax.webp "Now what?: Gymea's Migrant Servuice will close at the end of the month after losing funding and clients Vuolit Girgis [right], Ajang Biar and Luisa Morton are angry. Picture: Chris Lane.")
THE migrant service at Gymea Community Aid and Information Service will close at the end of this month after losing federal funding.
The service has been helping migrants and refugees to settle in Sutherland Shire for 30 years.
The Department of Social Services told the centre in an email two days before Christmas that its application for $97,000 in funding had been denied.
Migrant services manager Jenny Grey, who has been in the role for a decade, will lose her job but is more concerned for new arrivals in the region.
Client Luisa Morton, who represents the Spanish-speaking community, said vulnerable people would be hurt the most from the federal government’s cost-cutting.
‘‘This is a very terrible situation and I am very disappointed,’’ she said.
Egyptian-born Vuolit Girgis could not praise enough Ms Grey or the services offered at the centre.
After arriving in Australia knowing only the phrase ‘‘me no English,’’ she is now a successful entrepreneur with a Sutherland-based business and will study soon for her masters degree at university.
Volunteers from the centre helped her children and many others with their schoolwork which allowed them to keep up with their peers.
Ajang Biar, a spokesman for the region's Sudanese community, said the homework assistance was revolutionary in keeping migrant children in school.
Mr Biar said many newly settled high school students felt marginalised and struggled to learn in a second language, leading many to drop out of school.
His cousin struggled and felt disenfranchised as a student until he received homework help organised by the migrant service.
"He is now a doctor and without that homework help he wouldn't have been able to do it," he said.
Social Services Minister Scott Morrison said Gymea Community Aid was eligible for bridging funding.
"The election commitment made by the government and implemented through the New Way of Working for Grants is reducing red tape, improving service delivery and providing greater flexibility to these service-delivery organisations," he said.
"The measure also had the difficult task of absorbing a funding reduction of $271 million as part of the government's broader budget-repair task.
"The funding round attracted unprecedented interest from service-delivery organisations, with more than 5500 applications, seeking total funding of more than $3.9 billion. In implementing these savings the government has focused on delivering support to frontline services in areas of greatest need.
"In some cases it was the first time many of these grants and those providing services had been subjected to a competitive tender process in decades."
Should funding for the centre be maintained?
