to the Home Office requirement for the issue of work permits to aliens that the employer bringing them to this country must assume responsibility for their repatriation on the termination or expiry of their contracts.
The practical difficulty of making workers observe the terms of their contracts is a real one and, in his efforts to secure the enforcement of contracts, Mr. Burn has approached many public authorities, both here and in Hong Kong. Inevitably the gist of their advice has been that a contract of employment is a matter between the parties concerned and that in the circumstances he describes no public authority has either the duty or the right to enforce compliance with its provisions. If either party commits a breach of contract, the remedy lies in a civil action in the Courts. I am sure that if Mr. Burn has consulted his Solicitors' or Employers' Association, he will have been given similar advice, and that some of the difficulties that an employer may expect to encounter in an action against an employee in the Courts will have been explained to him.
Mr. Burn's problem is essentially one that is faced by all employers who bring foreign workers to this country - they all have to guarantee repatriation of the workers and, as he says in his letter, other firms in the same business as his own do not appear to have found difficulty in acce ting the Hong Kong Government's requirements in this matter.
Finally, I should like you to know that I have taken note of lir. Burn's point that some clauses in the model contract purport to place certain duties and responsibilities on officials in the country in which the contract is to be
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