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(b) whether the Government has any plan to set a special quota for the importation of labour for the industry; if so, how many workers are scheduled to be imported under the plan and when the plan will be implemented; if not, how the problem of labour shortage in the industry will be solved, and what remedial measures will be taken to prevent the industry vanishing from the territory due to labour shortage; and
(c) of the reasons for the unsatisfactory results of the training programme; and whether the Government will carry out a review of the programme and organise another one in the near future?
Reply:
Mr President,
The training programme which the Hon Lo Suk-ching referred to was a pilot retraining programme for pig farm workers launched jointly by the Employees Retraining Board (ERB) and the Agriculture and Fisheries Department (AFD), in collaboration with the Federation of Pig Raising Co-operative Societies of Hong Kong in August 1995. Under this programme, ERB reimbursed the employers of pig farm workers 50% of the $5,000 monthly salary paid to the retrainees during the 6 months of their on-the-job training. This included 8 days of intensive training on the latest pig rearing technology provided by AFD. These employers also undertook to employ the retrainees on completion of their 6-month programme at a monthly salary of not less than $7,000. The programme was open for applications by persons between 40 and 60 years of age. This retraining programme did not cover chicken farm workers.
I now reply to each of the three specific parts of the Question.
(a) The Government has no statistics on whether there is any shortfall of workers in the livestock farm industry, as the employment and unemployment statistics compiled by the Census & Statistics Department do not contain a breakdown to such a finite level. The number of reported vacancies from employers of pig farms participating in the pilot retraining programme was 70 in August 1995.