Hong Kong to recruit 20,000 housemaids

Hong Kong will recruit around 20,000 housemaids from Bangladesh in the next six months, said Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain on Tuesday.

“We might send female workers to Hong Kong under state arrangements after completion of the detail process very soon,” he told reporters at his ministry.

The aspirants will be selected through online registration that might start in two or three weeks across the country, the minister added.

He was talking to the reporters after a meeting with a delegation of Association of Bangladesh Employment Agencies (AOBEA) in Hong Kong in his ministry to discuss the detail process.

In Hong Kong, monthly wage for female domestic workers would be around Tk 40,000 ($490) and the employers would bear the airfare and other costs of migration, Khandaker Mosharraf added.

The migration cost for the interested workers will be around Tk, 40,000.

Initially, the candidates, however, do not have any expenditure for migration to Hong Kong, as the costs would be borne by the employers who would deduct the migration cost from a worker’s monthly wages in two years.

The selected female workers will be sent to Hong Kong on completion of two months’ compulsory training to be given by trainers of the government, the minister mentioned.

The aspirants would be taught spoken Cantonese and English languages, child rearing, how to prepare Chinese food and house keeping, said the ministry officials.

Hong Kong would recruit housemaids from Bangladesh under an agreement between the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training and the General Chamber of Hong Kong signed in May of 2012, they added.

Source: The Daily Star