Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee delivered the 2025 Policy Address to the Legislative Council today (Sept. 17). He said that the HKSAR government will combat the abuse of the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme (ESLS) to ensure the employment priority of local workers, with restrictions on imported waiters, waitresses, and junior cooks under the ESLS taking effect on Sept. 18.
Starting Sept. 18, employers are required to:
- Extend the local recruitment process from four weeks to six weeks, during which they must attend an on-site job fair organized by the Labour Department once a week.
- Implement the manning ratio requirement more stringently such that it is calculated based on posts being applied for, but not on all posts engaged by an employer. In other words, an employer applying to import a waiter/waitress and a junior cook must have already employed two local full-time waiters/waitresses and two local full-time junior cooks.
In addition, Lee pointed out that the government will step up efforts to combat illegal employment, establish a dedicated hotline for reporting illegal workers, and strengthen intelligence collection and inter-departmental joint enforcement operations to safeguard the employment opportunities of local workers.
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