By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-11-15 05:21:44 | Updated at 2024-11-15 07:20:11
2 hours ago
Hong Kong will prioritise the local workforce and ensure they get job opportunities, the labour chief has said, despite recent predictions that the city will be short of 180,000 employees by 2028.
Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han also said on Friday that encouraging young people to work in the Greater Bay Area would not exacerbate the manpower shortage.
“It will help the youth gain a better understanding of the country and may make them circulate back to Hong Kong,” he told a radio programme, noting that it would not contradict the principle of favouring local employment.
He added that it would certainly promote Hong Kong as an international metropolis and make good use of the “one country, two systems” governing principle.
While hailing Hong Kong’s schemes of importing labour as successful in increasing the working population, Sun said people were also retiring or leaving the city which offset some import effects.
He said there were many study opportunities in the city for young people who were often equipped with tertiary education and might not want to be skilled workers.
“We only import around 10,000 skilled foreign workers as we hope to prioritise local employment,” he said, adding that the government would come up with more measures to attract young people to enter the industry.
