************************************************************
The Chief Executive-in-Council had endorsed the final recommendations on future directions of the Employees Retraining Board (ERB) to enhance and upgrade its training and retraining services for the local labour force, a spokesman for the Labour and Welfare Bureau said today (April 3).
The ERB released a public consultation document on its future role and functions in January 2008 following a strategic review. The consultation document recommended that the ERB should provide more comprehensive and diversified training and retraining services for the local labour force. The views received from all sources during the consultation period were mostly in support of the new directions of the ERB.
The Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, welcomed the decision, noting that the ERB would better meet future challenges, especially in face of the financial tsunami, by ¡§improving the breadth and depth of its services to provide a flexible, quality and resilient labour force for Hong Kong¡¨.
¡§To meet the growing training and employment needs of its expanded target clientele at a time of economic downturn, the ERB plans to offer at least 123,000 training places in 2009-10 and stands ready to provide an additional 20,000 places should the need arise,¡¨ he said.
Elaborating on the new positioning of the ERB, the spokesman said, ¡§In the past, the ERB mainly aimed to provide timely skills training for the unemployed with the objective of helping them secure employment. With the wave of globalisation, the advent of a knowledge-based economy and the rapid development of technology, it is important for our local workers to pursue life-long learning and cope with ongoing changes.
¡§Manpower development should therefore be the central perspective in the design of training, and ¡¥sustainability¡¦ the key to its service orientation.¡¨
To better reflect its new positioning, the ERB rebranded its services under the ¡¥Manpower Development Scheme¡¦ in July 2008 and will continue to be market-driven and employment-oriented to help the labour force, especially the less competitive workers, to sustain employment and continue to upgrade themselves, the spokesman said.
¡§In this respect, the ERB will revamp and improve its existing training courses, introduce new courses, and incorporate elements of enhancement of personal attributes into its training. It will ensure that its training courses gain recognition under the Qualifications Framework so that its graduates can secure recognised qualifications, or even professional qualifications, in addition to placement support. It also plans to launch skills upgrading courses for in-service workers of various industries to assist them in sustaining employment.¡¨
The spokesman stressed that in tandem with the expansion of its service targets, the ERB remained committed to serving the low-skilled unemployed people, displaced workers and the disadvantaged.
He pointed out that placement-tied vocational training courses and vocational Chinese programmes for ethnic minorities had been introduced.
¡§To attain wider reception of these courses, the ERB has started to produce programme prospectus in English and major ethnic minority languages for distribution through appropriate channels. Training and employment support services will also be strengthened in those districts where most ethnic minorities reside, such as Yau Ma Tei, Yuen Long, Sham and Shui Po,¡¨ he said.
The ERB is an independent statutory body established in 1992 under the Employees Retraining Ordinance. Since its establishment, the ERB has offered more than 1.3 million training places, benefiting more than 620,000 trainees in total.
Ends/Friday, April 3, 2009
Issued at HKT 10:20
NNNN
