Hong Kong government studying link between long working hours and employee deaths
Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong says there is a multitude of factors influencing cases where people die at work, and a clear definition is ‘difficult’
The Hong Kong government is studying the link between long working hours and employee deaths in a bid to clearly define such cases in the future, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Dr Law Chi-kwong said on Wednesday.
Law was asked in a written question by insurance sector lawmaker Chan Kin-por about the number of suspected cases of “deaths from overexertion” in Hong Kong, citing by-census data which showed 11.1 per cent of some 3.43 million employees worked 60 hours or more a week.
“Around 32,000 [0.9 per cent] even worked 75 hours or more a week,’’ Chan said.
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He noted public concerns about excessively long hours of work easily triggering “various kinds of occupational diseases”, including “sudden deaths” from overexertion.
Chan said Japan and Taiwan already had definitions for “death from overexertion”.
The latest case in Japan involved 31-year-old media worker Miwa Sado, who reportedly logged 159 hours of overtime in one month before dying of heart failure in July 2013. The incident was only made public by her former employer, public broadcaster NHK, in October last year.
Law said that as “sudden deaths caused by overexertion at work” had no clear definition in Hong Kong, there were no local statistics on such cases.
