More than 100 complains pertaining to enhanced imported worker scheme
發佈日期: 2025-07-13 21:05
TVB News
The government has received more than a hundred complaints pertaining to its Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme which aims to fill worker vacancies in Hong Kong.
Speaking with TVB News, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun said preliminary evidence has authenticated three such cases, but stressed the imported worker scheme is necessary to address the city's ongoing manpower shortage problem.
Hong Kong's latest unemployment rate reached 3.5 percent -- a record high in the past two and a half years.
This as various sectors in the city have raised concerns about whether the government's Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme should be temporarily halted.
Speaking on a TVB programme, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun noted the primary issue with the labour scheme is that authorities received more than a hundred complains even without any employers abusing the mechanism.
He added that among the three authenticated complaints, two involved local workers being fired after the arrival of their imported counterparts, and the other a separate issue in the cleaning sector.
Sun said authorities would call job seekers as part of the process to check if employers deliberately chose to hire imported labourers as a replacement for local ones.
He further noted if such an act was proven, the government will cancel all of the employer's current applications for imported workers as well as for the next two years.
But Sun stressed that the imported labourer scheme should not be halted owing to the overall situation of Hong Kong's manpower shortage problem, noting that the city reached its labour manpower peak in 2018.
The labour chief added imported workers make up 5 percent of the workforce in the catering sector alone, while they constitute 1 percent of Hong Kong's total figure.
Meanwhile, authorities are planning to review the enhanced labour scheme by the end of September, and make improvements once both representatives from the employer and employee sides reach an agreement.
