595.1
Fighting Against Youth Unemployment: The Hong Kong Experience
Ngan-pun NGAI (Dr.)
Adjunct Professor & Senior College Tutor
Shaw College & Department of Social Work
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, the high youth unemployment rate due to the rising uncertainty and volatility of global economy and financial crisis since the late 1990s has driven the Government and various sectors to commit themselves to enforce a series of remedial policies and services to alleviate the problem of youth jobless and to get youth into jobs and work training. The concrete plan targeting at unemployed youth includes two major categories: First, several pre-employment training programs such as Youth Pre-employment Training program, Project Yi Jin, Youth Work Experience and Training Scheme, and Hong Kong Young Ambassador Scheme, and second, temporary employment opportunities such as Special Job Attachment Program, Program Assistant, Peer Counselors, and Summer Student Helpers. This paper examines issues relating to those policies and training programs aiming at fighting against youth unemployment and proposes plausible solutions to remedy and improve the present policies and practices in dealing with the problems. The proposed measures are: 1) formulating a long-term youth employment policy to provide youth with appropriate training in occupational knowledge and skills; 2) setting up a centralized system to strengthen the information and communication network of the territory’s labor market in order to facilitate youth to seek employment resources and assistance; 3) building up closer collaboration between the voluntary service sector and the business sector in order to look for more pre-employment training opportunities, chances of temporary employment, full-time job possibilities, community participation and financial support; and 4) using multiple methods to fight against youth unemployment.