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market cleansing. Though these kinds of service are excluded from the existing quota for importing foreign workers, some private companies still employ illegal overseas workers. The USD should therefore really stipulate in its contracts that the contractor cannot employ unskilled overseas workers. A monitoring mechanism should also be instituted because prevention is always better than cure. With these words, I second the motion.
Mr. Daniel To Boon-man (in Cantonese):—I would like to amend the motion and I have in fact made copies for you Mr. Chairman. The last line of the original motion would be amended to ‘... contractors shall not employ overseas unskilled workers . . .`. I support the spirit of this motion but I think that the actual implementation might involve difficulties. Nevertheless, I hope the UC and the USD would follow this up in the awarding UC contracts.
Chairman (in Cantonese):—Someone will have to second the amendment. Mr. LEUNG Kam-tao, you support the amendment. Alright so we have a proposer and a seconder. Because the original proposer has already supported the amendment, Members can speak on both the original and the amended motions because after all the amendment is very minor, so there is no need to jump from one to the other.
Mr. Lai Wing-LIN (in Cantonese):—We can see from the motion that the proposer agrees to have overseas workers except that prior approval must be given by the Council before such workers can be hired. In other words, the power to hire the overseas workers will now rest with the Council and not in the hands of the contractors. If the idea of this motion, which includes UC services and projects, is to prohibit the use of overseas workers, then does it mean that we have to cancel the contract with companies which have already employed overseas workers? For example, if Jardines provides catering services in UC venues and at the same time employs a lot of overseas workers under its management, do we therefore have to withdraw our contracts with this company? A big company obviously has a lot of supporting departments and if these supporting departments employ overseas workers, does it also mean that we then have to withdraw our contracts with this company? You can of course say that these workers are not working in our sites but then the overseas workers of the supporting department may manufacture, let's say, a window frame and transport the window frame to our sites, so how can you prove that overseas workers are not involved in the UC projects and how do you embark on monitoring the contractors? Mr. Fred Li has pointed out that since the number of overseas workers employed by UC contractors is very small and thus the impact on local workers is small. I don't really agree with this point because you have to look not only at the worksites but to other supporting departments of the company as well.
Hong Kong is facing an unemployment problem but we should not exclusively put the blame on overseas workers for they have made a definite
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market cleansing. Though these kinds of service are excluded from the existing quota for importing foreign workers, some private companies still employ illegal overseas workers. The USD should therefore really stipulate in its contracts that the contractor cannot employ unskilled overseas workers. A monitoring mechanism should also be instituted because prevention is always better than cure. With these words, I second the motion.
Mr. Daniel To Boon-man (in Cantonese):—I would like to amend the motion and I have in fact made copies for you Mr. Chairman. The last line of the original motion would be amended to ‘... contractors shall not employ overseas unskilled workers . . .`. I support the spirit of this motion but I think that the actual implementation might involve difficulties. Nevertheless, I hope the UC and the USD would follow this up in the awarding UC contracts.
Chairman (in Cantonese):-Someone will have to second the amendment. Mr. LEUNG Kam-tao, you support the amendment. Alright so we have a proposer and a seconder. Because the original proposer has already supported the amendment, Members can speak on both the original and the amended motions because after all the amendment is very minor, so there is no need to jump from one to the other.
Mr. Lai Wing-LIN (in Cantonese):—We can see from the motion that the proposer agrees to have overseas workers except that prior approval must be given by the Council before such workers can be hired. In other words, the power to hire the overseas workers will now rest with the Council and not in the hands of the contractors. If the idea of this motion, which includes UC services and projects, is to prohibit the use of overseas workers, then does it mean that we have to cancel the contract with companies which have already employed overseas workers? For example, if Jardines provides catering services in UC venues and at the same time employs a lot of overseas workers under its management, do we therefore have to withdraw our contracts with this company? A big company obviously has a lot of supporting departments and if these supporting departments employ overseas workers, does it also mean that we then have to withdraw our contracts with this company? You can of course say that these workers are not working in our sites but then the overseas workers of the supporting department may manufacture, let's say, a window frame and transport the window frame to our sites, so how can you prove that overseas workers are not involved in the UC projects and how do you embark on monitoring the contractors? Mr. Fred Li has pointed out that since the number of overseas workers employed by UC contractors is very small and thus the impact on local workers is small. I don't really agree with this point because you have to look not only at the worksites but to other supporting departments of the company as well.
Hong Kong is facing an unemployment problem but we should not exclusively put the blame on overseas workers for they have made a definite
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£185
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