Local workers have shunned jobs on new airport projects as the job market recovers, contractors claim.
The contractors are short of at least 700 electricians, handymen, metalwork and woodwork workers, and will have to recruit overseas workers if the vacancies are not filled by September.
Figures in June showed about 500 applicants, who had registered with the employment centre for jobs at airport project sites, had withdrawn.
A spokesman for the New Airport Projects Co-ordination Office said the policy was to give priority to locals.
'But if the contractors cannot find enough workers despite going through the prescribed procedures, they may apply to import workers from overseas.' Unionist Elaine Tsoi Lai-ling, of Christian Industrial Committee, however, claimed employers were forcing local workers out.
She said: 'We know that many applicants withdraw because they find the airport sites too far from the urban areas and costs of commuting will be too high.
