XN000022-1995-06-07 — Page 13

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Job Placement

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As regards job placement assistance, the Local Employment Service (LES) of the Labour Department is meeting the challenge posed by the recent rise in the number of job seekers through the Pilot Job Matching Programme launched in April this year. This programme was designed specifically to assist displaced workers over 30 years of age to re-enter the work force. This Programme is fully integrated with the Employees Retraining Scheme. Already, it has successfully matched 167 displaced workers out of a total of 612 registrants with the relevant job vacancies in the first two months of its operation. Additional resources will be provided to Labour Department to extend the Programme from 5 LES offices to all the 9 LES offices this autumn. Our aim is to triple both the number of registrants and placements by the end of the year. On top of these efforts, the Labour Department will provide prompt on-site employment assistance service for workers who are about to be retrenched, to help them secure alternative employment in good time.

Household survey

Our experience indicate that retraining and job placement are the two most effective means in facilitating displaced workers to rejoin the work force. The challenge before us is to ensure that they are targeted exactly at those most in need of such assistance. To ensure the effectiveness of these job placement and retraining measures, we will double the sample size of 13,050 households per quarter of General Household Survey to obtain more detailed information in respect of the profile of both the unemployed and job vacancies. We will also include more items in our survey of vacancies. The enhanced General Household Survey will start in October. With such information, we should be able to devise better ways and means to 'match' the unemployed with the vacancies.

Enforcement Actions

We are firmly committed to taking tough enforcement actions to clamp down on abuses of our labour importation schemes and illegal employment. We will not tolerate those who abuse the labour importation schemes. Imported workers are not cheap labour to be exploited. The Labour Department will conduct more vigorous inspections at the places of employment and accommodation of imported workers to guard against abuses involving breaches of conditions of the Standard Employment Contract such as underpayment of wages and unpaid overtime work.