134 Employment
people aged between 15 and 29 to improve their chances of employment, and to help them secure sustainable employment or self-employment.
In 2011, the two centres provided services to 74 136 young people.
Employees Retraining Board
The Employees Retraining Board (ERB) is a statutory body set up under the Employees Retraining Ordinance. Its members include employer and employee representatives, people in the vocational training, retraining and manpower planning fields, as well as government officials. It is a co-ordinating, quality assuring and funding body which works with appointed training bodies to provide training and related services.
Following its repositioning, the ERB now provides, under its 'Manpower Development Scheme', market-driven training and employment support services through its network of about 130 appointed training bodies, operating some 415 training centres across Hong Kong. People aged 15 or above with education attainment at sub-degree level or below may enrol in its full-time placement-tied skills training and part-time skills upgrading or generic skills training courses. At the end of December 2011, there were about 850 courses covering 28 industries.
The ERB runs a Youth Training Programme to help non-engaged youths aged between 15 and 20 to regain an interest in learning and to better plan and develop their careers. The ERB also provides training and employment support to other groups which include new arrivals, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, people recovered from work injury and occupational diseases, as well as rehabilitated ex-offenders.
In addition to providing placement support service to the graduates of its fulltime courses, the ERB administers a 'Smart Living Scheme' under which ERB graduates are referred to people needing their services which include domestic help, post-natal care, infant and child care, elderly care, escort for outpatients, care for discharged and hospital patients, as well as healthcare massage.
The ERB also attaches great importance to providing workers with training in generic skills, such as workplace language, business numeracy, IT applications, personal attributes and job search skills, to improve their chances of employment.
The ERB operates three service centres: in Kowloon East, Kowloon West and Tin Shui Wai to provide people in those districts with training and employment support.
The ERB ensures its training courses meet the standards set by the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications for recognition under the Qualifications Framework.
The Government stopped providing recurrent subvention to the ERB in 2008. Since then, its main income has come from the 'Employees Retraining Levy', collected from employers of imported workers including foreign domestic helpers. The levy goes to the Employees Retraining Fund (ERF), which is administered by the