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Fire and Ambulance Services

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Apart from maintaining law and order, it is also the community's wish to strengthen the Government's capabilities to safeguard lives and properties from fire and other hazards. We shall be providing an additional 66 posts to reinforce the staff at existing fire stations, and will be adding a further 161 posts to man two new fire stations in 1996-1997. We will also be introducing new legislation in this session to enhance fire prevention and protection in old commercial buildings. To enable us to meet our targets for responding to emergency ambulance calls, we have just completed We are already beginning to a consultancy study on our ambulance service. implement the recommendations from that study, and expect to see improvements in service in the next year.

Illegal Employment

No less than six Honourable Members called for stronger actions against illegal employment, which undermines our immigration control and threatens employment opportunities for our residents. We are determined to take resolute action to combat the problem. So far this year, we have already increased the number of raids by 86% over the same period last year, leading to an increase of arrests of employers by 12% and illegal workers by 19%, and an increase in prosecution by 6% for employers and 54% for illegal workers. With the doubling in strength of the Immigration Department Task Force to 92 officers last month, we will be able to carry out more targeted raids in the coming months. We will also be introducing a number of administrative and legislative changes over the next few months to make it easier to prosecute and convict include the offenders, especially unscrupulous employers. These measures introduction of the "W" prefix to Identity Cards of foreign domestic helpers to enable easier identification of their status; requiring contract workers to surrender their identity cards to the Immigration Department for cancellation at the end of their contracts; and requiring employers to inspect contract worker's travel documents to make sure that they can be legally employed before offering employment. Our proposal to increase the level of fines for illegal employment and other immigration offences has been submitted to this Council, and I hope Honourable Members will give their support to it. We will also continue to heighten community awareness of the illegal employment problem by having Immigration Department officials visiting and talking to trade and industry organisations and targeted business premises, and by publicising messages against illegal employment through APIs and other publicity materials. I join Honourable Members' appeal to the public to help us by reporting illegal employment activities to the Immigration Department through their telephone and fax hot lines.