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SLW's remarks on latest unemployment statistics (2)
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     Following is the transcript (English portion) of the remarks on the latest unemployment rate made by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, at a media stand-up today (June 16) :

Reporter: With the current figures sort of better or worse than expected, and you mentioned that school-leavers add the pressure on the unemployment rate.  What is your forecast for next month or next quarter?  

Secretary for Labour and Welfare: It's very difficult to predict, I haven't got a crystal ball. But it's encouraging as I said, there're two positive indicators.  First of all, for eight months in a row, it's been going up, now it's stablising.  So it's the first time of stablisation which is encouraging.  And also for the last four months, total employment has been decreasing. But now this time, it's actually growing by 12 800, for the first time in four months. All these augur very well for a revival but it's early to say. As I said, because we're still confronted with three challenges.  One is we're not out of the woods yet in terms of the economic recession, still far from recovery.  Secondly, the summer peak is coming up. We have to tackle this problem of youth unemployment, particularly the school-leavers and graduates. But we have got plans in hand already to tackle this rise in youth unemployment, particularly the need for jobs.  And finally, of course, the human swine flu community outbreak. It's also posing uncertainties to the labour market.  But having said that, we are confident that with the host of relief measures over the last few months, you know there are three rounds of economic measures and so on.  All these packages now in fact are filtering through.  We are seeing early fruits as it were in construction particularly and also in other segments as well.  For example, if you look at, a very good indicator of the success of the programme is the Guarantee Loans Scheme for SMEs, small and medium enterprises.  Over 8 400 enterprises have benefited from it and preserving, in the process, 150 000 jobs.  Come to think of it ¡V 150 000 jobs is not easy. You can imagine all these add up to a very helpful sort of boost in terms of so called "a shot in the arm" for the economy.

Reporter: Can you elaborate on the Youth Schemes?

Secretary for Labour and Welfare: For the Youth Scheme, we have comprehensive measures in hand.  There are three layers of it.  One is actually the younger groups, younger cohort, the 15-19 cohort. We've got the Youth Pre-employment Training Programme (YPTP), which is a pretty successful, well-tried programme providing them with pre-employment training and short-term job attachment. In other words, equip them for the labour market. And then of course, we got another programme called Youth Work Experience And Training Scheme (YWETS). Apart from pre-employment training programme, it's actually a training job. A training job for youngsters with education qualifications below sub-degree, in other words, below university graduate level.  Now we got altogether 35 000 places, a capacity of 35 000 places over the next two years to cater for the needs.  And finally for university graduates coming out this year, we will be actually launching on first of August, the University Graduate Internship Programme.  A hundred and forty million dollars is already secured from Finance Committee for the purpose. 3 000 opens for the local in Hong Kong, 1 000 will be across the border on the mainland: Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen.  The hope is to equip our university graduates for the labour market when the situation is bleak.  In other words, give them a chance and to really prepare them for future career.

Reporter: It's not a guarantee job?

Secretary for Labour and Welfare: It's not a guarantee job but it leads to jobs if they are good and also it's an investment, long term investment.  Come to think of it - opportunity to work in China, you know, it's not easy, and also opportunity to join local corporations as well.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Issued at HKT 21:57

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