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The following is issued on behalf of Housing Authority:
Six new improvement measures will be included in the Housing Authority's (HA) building contracts to be tendered out from May 2006 onwards to secure and monitor wages payment to workers.
"These measures demonstrate the HA's commitment to improving security of the payment of wages to workers and avoiding wages dispute," the Chairman of the Building Committee, Mr. Ip Kwok-him, said today (16th March).
"We believe that these measures should work in tandem with the enforcement actions under the statutory legislations so as to achieve the best deterrent effect," Mr. Ip added.
The measures require contractors, among other things, to appoint Labour Relations Officers to work on site to check and verify the records of workers in employment, attendance, payment of wages and acknowledgement of receipt so as to monitor the whole situation and identify any anomaly.
"The officer will also be responsible to receive, acknowledge and record complaints and inquiries from workers. Suspicious cases, complaints and defaults will be reported to Labour Department for further investigation, verification, resolution, prosecution and enforcement as appropriate under the legislation," Mr. Ip said.
"HA will then take necessary actions under the terms of the contract and List Management against any proven default," he added.
To effectively monitor wage payment to workers, contractors and sub-contractors are required to pay their workers through auto-pay bank account. Together with the existing requirement of maintaining a full record of workersĄŻ acknowledgement of receipt of wages and the attendance record, this will facilitate resolution of wage dispute if needed.
In proven cases of default, a new measure allows the employer to effect payment of outstanding wages to workers by the contractor verified by the Labour Department and ordered by the Labour Tribunal. The sum will then be deducted from the contract sum as a debt from the contractor.
"The measure also facilitates the contractors to recover the monies from the sub-contracts after paying the workers of their sub-contractor direct in case of defaults by their sub-contractors which has been required under the legislation," Mr. Ip said.
In tightening up site management, the contractor is also required to provide smart cards for recording workersĄŻ attendance; to produce Written Employment Agreements between the workers engaged on site and either the contractor or its sub-contractor to set out a clearer employment relationship; and to record all sub-contractors under a Sub-contractor Management Plan to provide greater transparency in the sub-contracting situation.
"Although these new measures cannot be included in the 16 existing building ( New Works) contracts, we will encourage these contractors to introduce the measures on a voluntary basis," Mr. Ip said.
As a major public sector developer having a large volume of construction activities, Mr. Ip said, the HA would further enhance its listing requirements.
"Poor performance in the up-keeping of records related to payment of wages and its monitoring as well as convictions of non-payment of due wages by the contractor or his sub-contractors will trigger the consideration for regulatory actions such as suspension from tendering and removal from the relevant lists," Mr. Ip said.
Referring to a proposal for the HA to use the Retention Money for the three construction contracts forfeited to pay the workers their overdue wages, the Housing Department held the view that there was no legal and contractual basis for HA to do so. The Building Committee and the Tender Committee agreed with the views of the department.
On views that there were three cases in the past under which Retention Monies for building contracts were used to pay the workers their overdue wages, the department had thoroughly studied the cases and confirmed that there were no precedent cases.
Ends/Thursday, March 16, 2006
Issued at HKT 22:31
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