Category: KB

Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region

     Following is a question by the Hon Lam Chun-sing and a reply by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Chris Sun, in the Legislative Council today (July 9):
 
Question:
 
     In May this year, the Government announced various measures to promote the silver economy. There are views that in terms of unleashing “silver productivity”, the authorities should introduce more measures to help grass-roots elderly to overcome employment difficulties and improve employment conditions. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
 
(1) as quite a number of grass-roots elderly persons have relayed that under the existing labour importation policies, employers tend to hire younger imported workers, resulting in fewer job opportunities for the elderly, particularly for the job categories covered by the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme, whether the Government will consider tightening such scheme, for example, by setting quota ceilings for all job categories, so as to enhance employment opportunities for the elderly;
 
(2) as some elderly job seekers have relayed that even if they met the job requirements, some employers explicitly indicated that they refused to hire them due to their advanced age, whether the authorities will actively study the enactment of legislation to combat age discrimination in the workplace; and
 
(3) given that the Government proposed in 2023 to increase tax deduction for Mandatory Provident Fund voluntary contributions made by employers for their employees aged 65 or above to encourage them to make contributions for mature employees, with a view to increasing the retirement savings of the silver-haired group, and proposed in the 2024 Policy Address to put the relevant measure under the work of the Working Group on Promoting Silver Economy, of the progress of taking forward the relevant measure?

Reply:
 
President,
 
     The Government has been implementing various measures to assist job seekers in securing employment. Taking account of the employment needs of older and middle-aged persons, the Government provides diversified employment support and promote elderly-friendly employment practices to encourage and assist them to re-enter or remain in the employment market, and to unleash the labour force of older persons.
 
     On July 15 last year, the Labour Department (LD) launched the three-year Re-employment Allowance Pilot Scheme to encourage persons aged 40 or above who have not been in paid work for three consecutive months or more to re-join the employment market. Each eligible participant who has worked for 12 months continuously will be provided with a re-employment allowance up to $20,000. Response to the Scheme is very favourable. As at June this year, over 45 000 participants and nearly 23 000 placements were recorded. About a quarter of the participants and placements are persons aged 60 or above. In tandem with the above Scheme, the LD, through the training subsidy of the Employment Programme for the Elderly and Middle-aged, encourages employers to hire persons aged 40 or above and provide them with training to uplift the work skills of older and middle-aged persons.
 
     In consultation with the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau (FSTB), the reply to the Member’s question is as follows:
 
(1) On the premise of ensuring employment priority for local workers, the Government suitably allows employers to apply for importation of workers to replenish the labour force in Hong Kong. The LD has implemented the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme (ESLS) since September 4, 2023 to suspend the general exclusion of the 26 job categories as well as unskilled or low-skilled posts from labour importation under the previous Supplementary Labour Scheme for two years.
 
     When implementing the ESLS, the LD is committed to safeguarding employment priority for local workers. Applicant employers of the ESLS must undertake a four-week local recruitment exercise and give priority to employing suitable local workers to fill the vacancies at a salary not lower than the prevailing median monthly wage of a comparable position in the market. The ESLS requires that employers taking on local job seekers through any recruitment channels during the local recruitment period must not offer employment terms less favourable than those agreed by the LD, nor can they impose on job seekers any restrictive requirements such as age or gender. The ESLS also requires employers to meet the manning ratio requirement of full-time local employees to imported workers of 2:1 on a continuous basis. At the same time, employers shall not displace serving local workers with imported workers. To protect the employment opportunities of local workers, employers should retrench imported workers first in the event of redundancy.
 
     To further strengthen the protection of employment priority for local workers, the LD implemented new measures on June 17, including displaying the names of applicant companies on the Interactive Employment Service website when publishing the job vacancies in respect of the ESLS applications which pass the initial screening and commence the four-week local recruitment process after that date to increase the transparency of local recruitment and encourage job seekers to apply for relevant jobs.
 
The LD will review the experience and effectiveness of the ESLS, including the Scheme’s coverage, operation and implementation arrangements, measures to promote and ensure employment priority for local workers (including older persons), measures to protect the rights and benefits of imported workers, as well as other requirements and matters relating to the ESLS. The Government will take full account of and balance the views of stakeholders during the review when mapping out the future arrangements of the ESLS.

(2) The Government is committed to eliminating all forms of discriminatory ideas and behaviours. In the realm of employment, the Government encourages employers to adopt the principle of “Count on Talent, Not Age in Employment” when assessing the abilities of candidates or employees, and use reasonable and standardised selection criteria. According to the results of a survey conducted by the Census and Statistics Department, the vast majority of respondents did not view age as an important factor affecting employment, reflecting that age discrimination is not a major problem in Hong Kong’s employment market.
 
     The Government will continue to promote and uphold equal employment opportunities by disseminating and advocating the message of fairness in employment, as well as strengthening training and retraining to enhance the employability of individuals across all age groups.
 
(3) The proposed tax initiative to employers to make more Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) voluntary contributions for their employees aged 65 or above aims to encourage more mature employees to consider staying in the labour force and continue to contribute to economic growth after reaching age 65 while increasing their retirement savings. Given that there were views on the limited effect for this standalone measure and recommendations that this measure should be combined with the other initiatives on silver economy for creating synergy, the Chief Executive’s 2024 Policy Address announced that this proposal would be included in the work of the Working Group on Promoting Silver Economy (Working Group). Upon review, the Working Group considered that the proposal has complicated the policy objective of MPF, and the restriction on employees receiving voluntary contributions also casts doubt on the effectiveness of the proposal. In terms of encouraging the elderly to join the labour force, the Working Group has already rolled out various targeted measures to help unleash “silver productivity” as part of the 30 measures for promoting silver economy announced on May 27 this year, such as accord priority to post-50s for receiving training consultation service, reviewing the Re-employment Allowance Pilot Scheme and Employment Programme for the Elderly and Middle-aged, and stepping up the promotion of elderly-friendly employment practices. The Government considers that resources should be concentrated on the aforementioned measures to promote employment of older persons in a more focused and direct manner.

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