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An amendment to the Vocational Training Council Bill proposes to empower the council to engage in activities outside Hong Kong, to keep pace with the increasing numbers of Hong Kong firms engaging in cross-boundary operations. It will also help Mainland companies recruit workers from Hong Kong.
The council's ability to equip the workforce to cater for the demand of these firms will be crucial to maintaining the workers' competitiveness and employment prospects. It will also be beneficial to young people for the council to arrange for industrial attachments across the boundary for them to acquire valuable working experience and enhance their employment opportunities upon graduating.
Programmes will help meet manpower needs
The council wants to operate activities outside Hong Kong, including job attachments in the Mainland for youth, skills certification programmes and award bearing/professionally recognised programmes.
These proposed activities will help meet the trained and qualified manpower requirements of Hong Kong business establishments with operations in the Mainland. At the same time, they will provide useful exposure for trainees and better equip local workers for employment in the Mainland.
The bill, gazetted today, also covers other minor amendments to the council's ordinance, including the replacement of the term "disabled person" by "person with a disability" to conform with international nomenclature, and providing for any of the council's deputy chairpeople to be signatory of accounts when the chairperson is absent from Hong Kong or is unable to act as chairperson.
The bill, which has been uploaded to the Gazette's website (http://www.gld.gov.hk/egazette/), will be introduced in the Legislative Council on January 14, 2004.
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