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":141457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,96428,99,60913,96426,96429,26447,164,96432,10340,96430,96431,23235,44,96427,96425,15216,165],"class_list":["post-141456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","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-frankie-ngan-man-yu","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-construction-industry-employees-general-union","tag-labour-import-scheme","tag-legislative-council","tag-news","tag-policy-address","tag-public-works-projects","tag-scmp","tag-unemployment-rate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}