Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Chris Sun, after attending a radio programme to elaborate on initiatives in "The Chief Executive's 2022 Policy Address" this morning (October 21):
 
Reporter: Mr Sun, on the scheme to hire overseas care workers for residential care homes, when can we expect the details of the scheme to be finalised, and also when can the first batch of workers arrive?
 
Secretary for Labour and Welfare: On the importation of care workers for residential care homes, we are right now knocking out the exact detail of the special scheme. We hope we will be able to share with the public very soon about how we are going to relax the ratio control, to what extent we are going to expand the scheme. Our aim is to cover all residential care homes and also the exact proposal to speed up the whole process of application, vetting and approval.
 
     Right now, as you might recall, earlier in the year, in the light of the fifth wave of epidemic, we have introduced a one-off special scheme allowing all residential care homes to import a limited number of care workers under the Supplementary Labour Scheme to help them. The end result of that scheme is about 3 000 applications and we have approved them all already. These some 3 000 quota would be good for two years, that should be enough to cater for their needs in the coming year and a bit beyond. This would allow us a bit of time to knock out and then implement the exact detail of the special scheme to meet the medium to long-term need of residential care homes. 
 
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Friday, October 21, 2022
Issued at HKT 12:23

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