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Way forward for labour importation schemes announced
Following the endorsement of the Governor-in-Council, the Government today (Tuesday) announced that the Supplementary Labour Scheme (SLS) will be implemented on February 1, 1996 and a review will be conducted when 2,000 visas have been issued under the scheme.
At a press conference to give details of the SLS, the Secretary for Education and Manpower, Mr Joseph W P Wong, pointed out that employers would only be allowed to bring in imported workers if they were genuinely unable to find local staff to fill their job vacancies.
"All applications will be considered individually and only genuine cases meeting all the criteria of the scheme will be approved," he said.
Mr Wong explained that to ascertain whether the SLS was achieving its policy objective, a review would be conducted when 2,000 visas had been approved.
"I am pleased that the Labour Advisory Board (LAB) has agreed to take on the monitoring role. Regular reports on the operation of the scheme will be submitted to the LegCo Manpower Panel," he said.
To implement the SLS, the Labour Department will need to step up its Job Matching Programme (JMP) and to expand the service to all job seekers. A job matching centre will be set up in the city to serve as a centralised one-stop unit.
To this end, the Commissioner for Labour will require an additional annually recurrent funding of $6 million for 23 new posts in 1995-96. The department will also need $10.5 million in 1995-96 and $17 million on a full year basis to operate the job matching centre.
To safeguard the interest of local workers, Mr Wong pointed out that employers applying for imported workers must first make genuine efforts to recruit locally followed by a mandatory participation in the Labour Department's JMP.
"Where appropriate, the Employees Retraining Board will be asked to organise special courses to train up local workers to meet the requirements of the employers," he said.