(b)
42 -
We are also providing a comprehensive system of technical education and vocational training through the Vocational Training Council (VTC), Clothing Industry Training Authority and the Construction Industry Training Authority. The training courses so provided aim at enabling both the unemployed and employed persons to acquire new skills to enter the labour market or to upgrade their skills in order to avoid being displaced in the labour market.
During the past three years, the VTC had provided training for 94,000 · full-time and 90,700 part-time students. As an active provider of ERB courses, the Clothing Industry Training Authority has provided training to about 2,300 unemployed/displaced workers during the same period. Meanwhile, the Construction Industry Training Authority has been providing a range of full-time short courses which are specially designed for workers who have been displaced as a result of economic restructuring. Some 2,920 workers were trained in these courses in the past three years.
We do not consider it appropriate nor necessary to make it compulsory for employers to inform the Labour Department when employees are dismissed or laid off for the sake of providing employment service for the affected workers, for the following reasons:
(i)
(ii)
The Labour Department has in place a set of administrative measures to gather information about potential large-scale dismissals or retrenchments. These measures, which include maintaining close contacts with trade unions and employers concerned, have proved to be very effective in enabling the Department to offer timely employment services to affected workers.
The Labour Department's Outreaching Placement Service (OPS) responds speedily to any major retrenchments by providing on- the-spot registration and immediate/priority job-matching and other employment-related services to retrenched workers. Since its inception on June 1995, the Department has provided this service for 12,926 workers in 118 retrenchment exercises.