Let Vietnamese citizens work in Hong Kong as domestic helpers, consul general says
Vietnamese Consul General Hoang Chi Trung is lobbying the government to allow his compatriots to gain work visas as foreign domestic helpers
Vietnam is lobbying Hong Kong to allow its citizens to work as domestic helpers in the city, the country's top diplomat here has revealed, saying he hopes it will do so within a year or two.
Hoang Chi Trung, Vietnam's consul general in Hong Kong and Macau, said he has talked to officials from the Labour Department and Immigration Department about letting Vietnamese people work as helpers in the city several times since he took up the top post last year.
"I have told them on several occasions that Vietnam is now different. We have very good economy for the last 30 years. People don't come and [become] refugees anymore," Trung said in an interview.
At present, the Hong Kong government does not allow people from Vietnam, mainland China, Macau, Taiwan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Cuba, Laos, North Korea or Nepal to work as domestic helpers in the city.
Trung said he believed the Hong Kong government had the ban in place because of the problems Vietnamese refugees brought in the 1970s and 1980s.
During those years, about a quarter of a million Vietnamese reportedly fled the country to Hong Kong after the Vietnam war. Riots became common. In 1995, thousands of Vietnamese refugees rioted while being transferred from one camp to another in the city, injuring some 200 police and refugees.