Hong Kong urged to look at Singapore, Macau methods for housing migrant workers; reuse of quarantine centres, cross-border commutes suggested
- Quarantine centres should be used to house large numbers of staff brought in from elsewhere, academic says
- Others believe Macau’s method of using commuting workers from mainland China is best route for Hong Kong
Hong Kong should copy Singapore’s strategy of creating accommodation for overseas workers and convert disused quarantine centres into housing for an influx of labour to help ease the city’s manpower problems, a top economist has said.
Some experts on Wednesday warned of a “social time bomb” if the housing requirements of foreign workers were not properly tackled.
But employers suggested adoption of Macau’s practice of hiring workers from Guangdong province so they could commute across the border from their own homes every day.
Professor Terence Chong Tai-leung, the executive director of Chinese University’s Lau Chor Tak Institute of Global Economics and Finance, agreed there should be large-scale recruitment from elsewhere, like Singapore.
About a third of Singapore’s workforce are migrant workers – including 270,000 domestic workers. A further 415,000 overseas employees work in the construction and manufacturing sectors.
“If we want to see real impacts, we need to import a lot of workers, not just some Band-Aid solutions,” Chong said.