Complaints by construction workers over unpaid wages have surged in the past six months due to employers' recklessness in putting in low bids for projects, unionists claim.
To address the growing problem, representatives from the building industry and the labour department are due to meet this morning in Sheung Wan.
The meeting follows a clash at a Yau Tong work site last Friday between police and 40 interior decorators who were demanding what they claimed was HK$10 million in unpaid wages from their subcontractor employer.
The Construction Site Workers' General Union said yesterday it had dealt with more than 280 cases of subcontractors failing to pay their workers in the first half of this year, compared with 160 for the whole of 2001.
Of these, 78 cases involved 30 or more workers, three times as many as in the preceding six months. On average, incidents on such a scale happened at least twice a week.
The union said subcontractors owed about 3,000 workers an estimated $40 million in total.
Ng Yan-kwong, the union's secretary, blamed the rise on the economic slump, as many subcontractors submitted extremely low bids to win projects.