Construction trade split on labour gap
Will Hong Kong face a shortage of construction professionals when work begins on several major infrastructure projects? An industry boss says it will, but a trade unionist is doubtful - and one professional says all he is seeing is job losses.
Conrad Wong Tin-cheung, president of the Hong Kong Construction Association, said the trade feared a shortage of labour, particularly middle managers.
'The construction sector will need about 20,000 professionals and technicians in the coming years, as many infrastructure projects will begin,' he said. 'It takes times to train people to join the construction industry and we are worried that there might be a lack of manpower. Our talent is also wanted overseas.'
He said companies would begin recruiting middle managers this year to prepare tenders for major projects.
But a veteran surveyor said he wasn't seeing big demand for middle managers and did not expect to in the future.
As head of a team supervising work on a construction site in Kowloon East, the surveyor said that since the global economic downturn began, all he had seen was colleagues losing their jobs.
'My team once had 10 surveyors. In October five were sacked. In May, two more were fired, said the surveyor, who declined to be named.
'It is just impossible for us to do our job. [But] the senior management ... turn a blind eye and keep saying there is a budgetary concern,' he said. The same thing had happened at sites across the city, he said.
Mr Wong expects recruitment of frontline construction workers to pick up from the middle of next year.
Shek Lam-shang, of the Construction Site Workers General Union, is not so sure. 'Will the market be that bright? The government also told us similar things in previous meetings. It is really hard to predict now,' he said.
It was too early to say when there would be a turnaround in the fortunes of the city's 286,000 registered construction workers, he said.
Still, the Institute of Vocational Education's construction department will increase training places in the 2009-10 school year by 30 per cent in anticipation of an increase in demand for talent.
Joseph Lee Hung-kwong, the head of the department, said: 'We had 640 school places last year and the number will go up to 860 in the coming school year, mainly in the Higher Certificate in Civil Engineering programme.'
