'Management must play bigger role
in training skilled workers'
BUILDING
CONTRACTORS'
ASSOCIATION TAKES
FIRST BIG STEP
By 'Cathay'
NINETEEN year old Cheung Sam had been an apprentice carpen-
ter for four years
but he had
never been allowed to use one tool of his trade.
His long working hours were spent as a plain labourer to one of the town's leading carpenters, who was also his uncle. Sam's training was verbal, visual but never manual.
T
His pay
more in the form of an allowance was small, but he was well cared for at his uncle's home, where he lived.
His only holidays were at Chinese New Year and on the birthday of Lo Pan, the patron saint of Chinese builders. On the latter day he joined hundreds of building employees throughout the district on a pilgrim-
These two lads are enrolled at the Building Trades Training Centre at Wong Tai Sin run jointly by the Building Contractors' Association and the Chinese Y.M.C.A.. The Centre is one of the first major steps by management to help overcome the shortage of skilled labour in the in- dustry and also to provide more than just a simple labourers' life for Hong Kong's youth, which in 1961, made up about 40 per cent of the popu- lation.