Reprieve for job training centre for disabled teens as government announces it will get a permanent Kowloon home near its current Kwun Tong base
- Secretary for Welfare Law Chi-kwong says the new location will be near the civil service training school which is to occupy Shine Skills Centre’s current site
- Shine will still have to move for a four-year period from 2021. Opposition lawmakers say the proposed temporary home in Kowloon Tong is not suitable
The fate of a job training centre for disabled teens took another twist on Wednesday, with the Hong Kong government announcing that the Kwun Tong facility would return to the vicinity of its current site after a redevelopment project is completed around 2025.
The new proposal means both the enhanced version of the Shine Skills Centre and a suggested civil servants’ training school will be housed near one another at the Kwun Tong site, instead of closing down the former to make way for the government’s staff, as had previously been planned.
The U-turn came after months of impassioned protests by current and prospective students, parents, and lawmakers at the decision to close the centre. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor revealed in her October policy address that the government would redevelop a 118,000 sq ft site in Kwun Tong, which currently houses, among other facilities, the Shine Skills Centre, operated by the Vocational Training Council (VTC).
At the site will be a civil service college featuring upgraded facilities for staff training, a district health centre and other community facilities.
The announcement in October drew a public outcry, with Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong first promising that the government was identifying a site at a more central location in Kowloon for a new integrated vocational training centre and then saying there was a possibility the VTC could continue to provide services at the new site under an enhanced mode.
During a tea session with reporters on Wednesday, Law made the surprise announcement that the new training centre would be built at a location near where Shine is currently situated.
“The civil service college is only about a third of the redevelopment site,” he explained.