HONGKONG entrepreneurs' attitudes to cheap foreign labour as an expendable commodity will lead to more tragic accidents, unionists have warned.
''This fire is symptomatic of the common Hongkong attitude to cheap labour,'' said Asian Migrant Centre counsellor, Ms Somkid Mahissya, referring to the Bangkok factory fire that killed more than 240 people on Monday.
''Many people here believe that it doesn't matter how they treat their foreign employees. It happens with their domestic workers, it happened with the victims of the fire, and it will happen again.'' In the search for cheap labour and land, manufacturers have established factories throughout the region, particularly in Thailand, the Philippines, southern China and Indonesia, catering for export markets in western Europe and the United States.
''If business people don't care, then there have to be laws and guidelines to force them to pay attention,'' said Miss Somkid.
''If we are not careful then that factory will start up again, perhaps in another country or under a different name, but still making toys at costs that are so low it becomes dangerous.'' The vice-chairman of the Hongkong Chamber of Commerce, Mr William Fung Kwok-lun, denied that local companies had a record of being careless with their overseas manual workers.
''I am very sad and surprised at what has happened. I really believe that Hongkong firms have tended to keep work and safety standards high. We often even set the pace in terms of better factories in poorer parts of the world,'' he said.
''My feeling is that in this case, [Hongkong shareholders] Kader only had a 40 per cent shareholding, so probably left the day-to-day running of the factory to the local Thai management. Perhaps the local authorities did not enforce the regulations.'' He said he did not believe it would be feasible to follow a recent suggestion by trades unionists that the Chamber of Commerce should persuade its members to comply with codes of practice recommended by the United Nations in their foreign ventures.