Govt urged to beef up support for grassroots workers
A community group on Sunday urged the government to do more to support grassroots workers, saying they lack the opportunity to move on to higher-paid jobs.  The Society for Community Organisation (SoCO) said it recently polled 262 workers from sectors such as cleaning, security, retail, and construction — and over half of them were unhappy with their wage level.  More than 60 percent of them said they were struggling to put food on the table, while about 10 percent were earning the minimum wage of HK$40 per hour, the group added.  SoCO's deputy director, Sze Lai-shan, told a press conference that some low-skilled workers had attended training courses held by the Employees Retraining Board to upgrade their skills, but still struggled to find higher-paid jobs on completion. "The Labour Department is not active enough to help these people... the Labour Department needs to adopt a more outreaching approach," she said. "The department can request employers to register all of their vacancies with the department so that officials can have a good command of the job vacancies and then suggest to those workers what kind of training courses they should take and what kind of jobs they can join."  Sze also pointed out that the government’s various labour importation schemes have make it harder for local workers to find jobs.  “The employers have a choice. They don’t necessarily need to employ local workers… We have some women who want to find jobs in elderly homes. Before they lacked manpower but now the employer is not eager to employ [those women].” She called on the authorities to keep a close eye on how firms apply for imported labour to prevent abuse of the system.