The Government has accepted the proposal tabled by its outsourced service contractors on the manpower arrangement for a statutory holiday on September 3.
The day has been made a public holiday to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of Victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and all employers must grant their staff a day off work.
After meeting with the contractors today, Secretary for Labour & Welfare Matthew Cheung told the media the Government allows the contractors to arrange compensatory leave for their staff within 60 days. They can also apply for a one-off ex-gratia payment for hiring additional staff according to their deployment needs.
"They are very concerned about the special statutory holiday on September 3, particularly in terms of additional staff cost. So they proposed to the Government whether we can allow them the flexible deployment of staff, so as to offset the cost of the additional holiday.
"We have accepted their proposal to allow them to use the 60-day window, because under the employment law, for statutory holidays, if an employee has to work on a statutory holiday, he or she will have to take leave within 60 days. So, in other words, use that window to deploy staff flexibly so that they could exhaust the leave."
