Lawmaker questions gov’t on high number of migrant workers
Lawmaker José Pereira Coutinho is again insisting that the government clarify the high number of non-resident workers in the city, citing that half of the working population are migrant workers.
In his interpellation, Coutinho considered the 170,000 non-resident workers to constitute an “astonishingly high proportion” of the workforce, slamming the government for not implementing labor laws to prioritize local workers’ employment.
Official government data shows that the city’s unemployment rate for residents has hit a record high of 4.5%, the highest rate since 2009.
He called on the government to optimize the mechanism for evaluating the number of such workers to ensure that workforce quotas are equitable and reasonably distributed.
“A large number of undifferentiated migrant workers are infiltrating the luxury retail, real estate, service sector, industrial and commercial sectors, hotel and hospitality sector, financial sector and education sector, all of which are considered to be well-paid,” he claimed.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Macau has lost some 30,000 migrant workers to layoffs or non-renewal of contracts, as firms were affected by the economic fallout caused by the pandemic.
The majority of the workers were from hotels and restaurants.
Several lawmakers have already called for clearer contract cessations in the non-local workforce, noting that many companies are in fact major non-local workforce employers, despite operating government tenders or contracts.
In response, the Secretary for Economy and Finance Lei Wai Nong defended the government, arguing that it cannot cancel all quotas for non-resident workers to solve Macau’s unemployment problems.
For him, reducing the number of quotas will not solve the city’s unemployment issue, implying that a skill-mismatch is at work in the region.
In addition, the Chief Executive last year encouraged workers to “adjust their mentality, so as to try a different profession according to their own aptitudes.”
