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A total of 131 job fairs have been organised since the establishment of the Labour Department's Recruitment Centre for the Catering Industry this February, the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, said this (September 3) evening.
Speaking at the dinner reception of the 39th anniversary of the Federation of Trade Union's Eating Establishment Employees General Union, Mr Cheung said that more than 55,705 vacancies of various kinds of positions in the catering industry had been received by the Centre by end-August, up 13% over with the same period last year.
More than 100 food and beverage establishments have made use of the Centre's service so far, offering 11,341 vacancies. A total of 10,794 on-the-spot interviews were arranged.
Mr Cheung said, "There are more than 210,000 employees in the catering industry, representing about 6% of the total employment population of 3.5 million in Hong Kong. As at March this year, there were about 12,700 food and beverage establishments, representing 4% of the total number of some 300,000 establishments.
"The Labour Department continues to receive an increasing number of job vacancies in the catering industry when the retail market and job market are suffering from the impact of the financial tsunami. This underlines the high turnover in the industry, and indeed, the turnover rate was as high as 23% in 2007."
Against this background, the Recruitment Centre for the Catering Industry was set up to help alleviate the situation by providing a centralised employment service to employers and job-seekers in the industry, Mr Cheung noted.
He said, "Recruitment events are organised and venues provided for employers and job-seekers to have job interviews on the spot to save job seekers' time on job applications and promote efficiency in the job market."
Mr Cheung thanked the Eating Establishment Employees General Union for offering invaluable advice on the setting up of the Centre and regularly disseminating recruitment information to its member organisations.
Ends/Thursday, September 3, 2009
Issued at HKT 19:45
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