By The SUN
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| Law chats with a parent during a recent visit to a pre-school in Sham Shui Po |
Hong Kong will soon designate more hotels as quarantine facilities for foreign domestic helpers to enable the territory to absorb more arrivals and thus stop the decline in FDH numbers, according to Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong.
“I hope that good
news will be announced in the short term,” Law said in his blog dated Jan 2.
These developments are expected to benefit thousands of FDHs who have been stranded in the Philippines because quarantine hotels have been fully booked.
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One employment agency manager said employers were even offering
bonus payments to them if they could book their helpers in the designated
hotels.
Hong Kong’s efforts to open further to new arrivals follow a decline in FDH numbers from 400,000 to 350,000 since January. November alone saw a drop of 1,400, Law said.
This despite new Immigration regulations that extended the
visas of FDHs already in Hong Kong to when their replacements could arrive.
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“The decline in the number of FDHs is not only affecting the
relevant Hong Kong families and those who need FDHs’ care; as some family
members need to leave their jobs to take care of their families, the labor
market and many industries in Hong Kong will also be affected,” Law said. “If
the situation continues, it may affect the ability of Hong Kong's overall
economic recovery.”
The new hotels will add new capacity to the 1,000 rooms
already being provided by the Rambler Garden Hotel and Courtyard by Marriott
Hong Kong Sha Tin, and the 1,138 rooms opened at the Regala Skycity Hotel after
Penny’s Bay was closed to arriving domestic workers.
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The Regala Hotel had been opened to accommodate FDHs who
could no longer check into Penny's Bay Quarantine Center, which had been
reserved to quarantine other categories of arriving passengers.
In effect, the third quarantine hotel did not add to the
number of FDHs accommodated.
“It can also be said that the number of foreign domestic
helpers coming to Hong Kong has not rebounded sharply in a short period of time
in compliance with the principle of anti-virus import,” Law explained.
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Hong Kong, however, will keep a watchful eye for infected
FDHs.
Before Christmas, the pandemic situation in the Philippines –
Hong Kong’s leading source of FDHs -- had been improving, with daily average
even hitting as low as 98 cases,
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Nevertheless, health officials were watching a resurgence of
Covid-19 after Christmas, which has resulted in the suspension of flights from Manila by Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines, after
bringing in cases of Covid-19 with the Omicron variant.
Law said, “… it remains to be seen whether they can avoid the risk of
a new wave of epidemic rebound."
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