TNAG-0873-FCO40-1083-Employment-of-children-in-Hong-Kong-1979 — Page 48

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work or factories which have previous records of child employment receive special attention. It has always been the policy of the Labour Department to give a high priority to the abatement of illegal child employment in industry and prosecution follows automatically in all confirmed cases.

(b) The extension of prohibition of child employment

to the non-industrial sector

(c)

With the enactment of the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Ordinance and the Employment of Children Regulations in 1979, chilire under the age of 11 are no longer allowed to take up employment in the non- industrial sector, effective 1 September 1979. Moreover, the minimum age for employment in all sectors, inclusive of the industrial sector, wil be raised to 15 as from 1 September 1980. These new provisions are meant to supplement the provisions of the Education Ordinance and to implement the government's policy of compulsory junior secondary education up to the child's 15th birthday or until the Form III course has been completed.

Nevertheless, under the law, children who have attained the age or 13 years may be employed in certain occupations in the non-industrial sector. The types of employment and the conditions thereof, will depend, among other things, upon whether or not they have completed Form III of secondary education (These legislative reforms and those under (e) below are an obvious and significant part of Hong Kong's acknowledgement of the International Year of the Child in 1979).

The changeover to the new-type juvenile identity cards has been most useful in helping labour inspectors to verify the age of suspected under-aged persons. It also enables prospective employers to verify the age before engaging a young person.

In the past, there had been cases where factory proprietors alleged that the children whom they had employed deceived them of their real age by making use of some other young persons' identity card. With this new-style juvenile identity card in use, it has become impossible for children to obtain employment by deliberate deception.

/(a)