Scotland Yard hunts for Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali speakers in United Kingdom

LONDON: Scotland Yard will recruit more bilingual officers with proficiency in 14 languages including Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali to connect with minority communities and increase public confidence in the UK's largest police force.

"We know that almost 300 languages are spoken in the capital. We need to recruit and deploy officers with second languages in areas where those languages are spoken," said Metropolitan Police chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe.

The move is aimed at connecting with minority communities to better police London and increase public confidence in Britain's largest police force.

"I believe it will help boost confidence, help to solve crime more effectively and support victims and witnesses," he said.

"These officers will be deployed into the community as the first line of contact with victims and witnesses, in areas where we believe it will make a difference," Clare Davies, the head of human resources for the Met Police, said.

The other major world languages which will feature in the month-long pilot campaign include Yoruba (Nigeria), Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, German, Turkish, Greek, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese and Sinhala (Sri Lanka).