Coronavirus Hong Kong: 200 extra quarantine slots ‘nowhere near enough’ to ease city shortage of domestic helpers
- Employers can attempt from Monday to book one of the Penny’s Bay quarantine slots for domestic helpers under a revised system
- But unions say the allocation is far below what is needed and Hong Kong is still many months from resolving workforce shortages
Hong Kong will release another 200 rooms at an official quarantine centre for inbound foreign domestic helpers, but employment agencies have slammed the move as woefully inadequate for easing the city’s shortage of the workers.
The new slots at the Penny’s Bay facility – available to book from Monday – still leave Hong Kong several months away from clearing the backlog of domestic workers waiting to enter the city, according to an employers’ union.
All 800 rooms at the government-run centre on Lantau Island were snapped up earlier this month within minutes of reservations opening under a scheme to allow helpers in the Philippines and Indonesia back into the city following coronavirus-related flight bans on those countries and issues with recognising vaccination records.
Hong Kong authorities subsequently suspended reservations beyond October 19 to allow for a review of the booking mechanism. The modified system is set to reopen at 9am on Monday for slots starting between October 22 and 28, but only 200 will be available.
The extra rooms bring total capacity at Penny’s Bay to 1,000, with another 409 available at the Silka Tsuen Wan hotel. They are the only two quarantine facilities for domestic helpers in the city.
Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong on Tuesday said the government was focused on allowing foreign domestic helpers to enter the city in a “controlled and orderly manner to reduce the number of imported infections”.
“We hope that making slots available each week will be more convenient and less stressful compared with opening up quotas on a daily basis,” Law said.
Under the old booking system, those who were unable to secure accommodation in the first round on September 14 would have to try their luck again a few days later. But the daily allocations of 50 slots were also gone within minutes, with recruitment agencies critical of a system that made people repeatedly scramble for places.