EMPLOYMENT
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before starting operation. During the year, the department issued 127 licences to employ- ment agencies dealing with local employment and 25 to those catering for employment
overseas.
Careers Service
The Youth Employment Advisory Service of the Labour Department provides a variety of careers service to students and young people. In 1981, officers of the service gave 310 talks on careers to about 56 696 students in 235 secondary schools. The service also organised, with the Hong Kong Association of Careers Masters, six regional careers conventions and took part in 28 other activities to provide careers information to students, teachers, parents and interested parties.
The service has produced 42 careers pamphlets. It also produces a monthly careers newsletter which is distributed free of charge to secondary schools, youth centres and other youth organisations.
The service operates three careers information centres - one on Hong Kong Island, one in Kowloon and the third in Tsuen Wan. Each of the centres is equipped with a careers reference library with about 1 200 titles on careers and related subjects, as well as audio- visual facilities for films, slide presentations, video-cassette recordings, cassette recordings and other resources. In 1981 some 18 150 students and young people visited the centres.
Some 22 exhibitors from commerce, industry and the government took part in the Labour Department's tenth annual careers exhibition which attracted 106 000 visitors.
Industrial Safety
The Factory Inspectorate of the Labour Department is responsible for enforcing the Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance and its subsidiary regulations. These provide for the health and safety of workers in factories, on building and engineering construction sites and at other industrial undertakings. Advice and assistance is given to management on guarding dangerous machinery parts, adopting safe working practices and laying out new factories to achieve a better working environment. The inspectorate also investigates industrial accidents and dangerous occurrences.
During the year the maximum fines in 19 sets of safety regulations were increased substantially. A set of new regulations, the Factories and Industrial Undertakings (Fire Precautions in Registrable Workplaces) Regulations, 1981, consolidate and improve the provisions for the prevention of, and escape from, fire in registrable workplaces and provide for the safe use and storage of inflammable substances in such places.
The textile industry safety sub-committee - set up in July - became the second tripartite, industry-based safety sub-committee to be formed under the Labour Advisory Board Committee on Industrial Safety and Accident Prevention. The first, the construction industry safety sub-committee, was established in 1980. These safety sub-committees bring together representatives of employers, workers and officers of the Labour Department to promote work safety in various industries.
The factory inspectorate, with the Government Information Services, considerably expanded its publicity programme for the promotion of industrial safety through extensive use of the mass media and other means. The Labour Advisory Board Committee on Industrial Safety and Accident Prevention held an industrial safety seminar for senior management in September and another for workers in November. A safety seminar for construction workers was also organised by the construction industry safety sub- committee.