Record jail term for wage offences hailed

The heaviest sentence ever handed down for an employer guilty of wage offences showed that the court was paying more attention to such cases, the labour chief said yesterday.

The comments from the permanent secretary for economic development and labour, Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, came after an advertising company employer was jailed for two months for wage offences.

Kong Wai-lung was sentenced on Thursday for failing to pay wages to seven youngsters who worked for his company from September to December in 2002. The employees, who were responsible for conducting telephone surveys, were each owed wages ranging from $2,000 to $3,000.

'It is the third time this year that an employer has been given a jail sentence for wage offences. This shows that the courts are attaching more importance to such offences,' Mr Cheung said. He said the department wanted to raise the penalty for such offences.

'The current maximum penalty for a wage offence is a fine of $200,000 and imprisonment for one year. We are proposing to raise it to $350,000 and imprisonment of three years.'

In the first half of the year there were 325 convicted summonses on wage offences, an increase of 30 per cent on last year.