Gas Co. to Set Up Phone Service in Asian Languages

Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese customers of the Southern California Gas Co. will be able to use their native languages to speak with service representatives through a toll-free telephone service to be inaugurated early next year.

The planned multilanguage service center was among steps to improve the utility’s service to Southern California’s rapidly growing Asian population announced Wednesday in response to recommendations from an Asian-American community advisory panel. The company had previously sought advice from panels representing blacks and Latinos.

Rose Ochi, an aide to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and a member of the advisory committee, said the company’s decision to seek out the views of an Asian-American panel placed it in “the vanguard” of public utilities in “trying to understand and be responsive to the new emergent communities” of ethnic Asians.

In 1980, ethnic Asians numbered 561,922, or 4.7% of the population in the gas company’s seven-county service area, according to U.S. census figures. Rapid growth has continued in the last five years.

Panel members and company officials expressed hope during a meeting Wednesday that their work will encourage greater efforts by other utilities in California to reach across language and cultural barriers.

Southern California Gas prepares some informational brochures in Korean and Chinese, as well as in English and Spanish.