ENG-2009 — Page 176

124 | Employment

working group under the board to deal with applications for labour importation under the Supplementary Labour Scheme.

Employment Services

The Labour Department provides a wide range of free employment and recruitment services to job seekers and employers through a network of 12 Job Centres, a Recruitment Centre for the Catering Industry, a Telephone Employment Service Centre, a Central Recruitment Unit and a Job Vacancy Processing Centre. Round-the-clock employment services are provided through the Interactive Employment Services (IES) website (www.jobs.gov.hk), which recorded over 1.2 billion page views in 2009, or an average page view of 3.32 million per day.

The department also organises large-scale and district-based job fairs to help job seekers find jobs and employers to recruit staff. For major closure or redundancy cases, the department runs a hotline for enquiries and special counters at Job Centres to provide priority referral and job matching services to retrenched employees.

In 2009, 181 468 job seekers registered with the Labour Department. There were 589 564 private sector vacancies displayed by the Labour Department in the year, or 12.2 per cent less when compared with 2008. A job placement figure of 120 870 was achieved in 2009, 17.4 per cent lower than in 2008.

Employment Programme for the Middle-aged

Under the programme, employers who engage eligible middle-aged people and provide them with on-the-job training are given a training allowance of $2,000 per month per trainee for up to three months by the Government. The subsidy period may be extended to a maximum of six months for deserving cases. At year-end, 46 518 middle-aged job seekers were employed under the programme.

Work Trial Scheme

As at the end of 2009, a total of 2 905 job seekers with exceptional difficulties finding jobs took part in the Work Trial Scheme run by the Labour Department.

On completion of the one-month trial, each participant receives $5,000 from the Labour Department plus $500 from the organisation for which he or she worked.

Transport Support Scheme

The Transport Support Scheme provides time-limited transport subsidy to needy. job seekers and low-income employees living in the four designated remote districts of Tuen Mun, Yuen Long, North and Islands to encourage them to venture beyond their districts to work or seek jobs.

Its eligibility criteria were relaxed in July 2008, and the subsidy period was extended from six to 12 months.

Two types of allowances are payable under the scheme: a Job Search Allowance of up to $600 payable on a reimbursement basis to cover transport expenses