Hong Kong authorities are set to tighten controls on employers seeking to import labour under a scheme following complaints of local workers being replaced, with measures to be proposed in the city leader\u2019s policy address, the Post has learned.<\/p>\n
Government sources said that authorities would roll out more public works projects to increase jobs in the construction sector, an area hit hard by a significant drop in private developments.<\/p>\n
With the unemployment rate climbing between May and July to a near three-year high of 3.7 per cent, or 145,000 people jobless, all eyes are on how Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu will address the situation in his annual policy blueprint on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Insiders said that some of Lee\u2019s proposals would look at the city\u2019s labour import scheme, which was expanded in 2023 and led to a substantial increase in the number of foreign workers from fewer than 3,000 to more than 50,000 by the end of May this year.<\/p>\n
More stringent measures would be introduced for employers applying to the scheme, including adjusting the mechanism of the required non-local to local manpower ratio, which currently stands at 1:2.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have ruled out the option of halting labour imports, or else Hong Kong will not have enough manpower for jobs,\u201d one insider said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong authorities are set to tighten controls on employers seeking to import labour under a scheme following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[174],"tags":[44334,79,9568,44333,10525,44338,179,18,44337,4202,44335,19,17,44336,42558,5,38155,44332,21351,4125],"class_list":["post-62675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-buildings-department","tag-business","tag-census-and-statistics-department","tag-chau-sze-kit","tag-chief-executive-john-lee-ka-chiu","tag-construction-industry","tag-economy","tag-eire","tag-frankie-ngan-man-yu","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-construction-industry-employees-general-union","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-labour-import-scheme","tag-legislative-council","tag-news","tag-policy-address","tag-public-works-projects","tag-scmp","tag-unemployment-rate"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}