HK academics see chance to give low-skilled workers jobs - and ease pressure on cadres

Academics are backing the legalisation of street hawking, saying it will ease pressure to create jobs and maintain social stability, which is important to the careers of many cadres in coastal cities.

A week after the proposed regulation to legalise street vendors in designated areas was submitted for public consultation, Hong Kong academics supported the plan, which has triggered heated debate on the mainland.

Joe Leung Cho-bun, professor of social administration at the University of Hong Kong, said the plan would create temporary prospects for low-skilled workers who had lost their jobs after their factories closed.

Street hawking was a widespread practice on the mainland and legalising it could recognise the labour-intensive employment in times of economic crisis, he said. However, he warned that informal employment could not be relied on as a long-term policy as it offered no protection.

Urban-registered unemployment was 4.2 per cent last year, but the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, put the real rate at 9.4 per cent. The academy estimated the jobless rate would rise to 10 per cent next year, compared with the 4.6 per cent forecast set by Beijing. Xinhua reported yesterday that there were 30 million street hawkers on the mainland.

Chinese University of Hong Kong's economics professor Tsui Kai-yuen said the global recession, which had devastated mainland exports, had put many out of work.