Club brings 1,000 new telephone betting jobs to Tin Shui Wai

The first phase of the Jockey Club's new telephone betting centre in Tin Shui Wai will be up and running next month, creating 1,000 part-time jobs for the hard-hit district.

Hiring will start at the end of this month and on-the-job training will be offered. The 24-hour betting centre will provide up to 2,500 part-time jobs in all.

The centre, which will open in phases, will eventually occupy two floors of the Housing Authority's Tin Heng Estate car park in Tin Shui Wai.

The club's chief executive, Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, said that from a business perspective, a telephone betting centre would not have been set up in the remote district but for the promise that the club had made to help residents there.

Tin Shui Wai is often in the news for the wrong reasons - family violence and tragedies. A mentally ill mother threw her two children out of a window before leaping to her death in October 2007.