Unemployed local construction workers protest at DSAL

A screencap of demonstrators blocking the road and trying to enter DSAL

A meeting with the Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL), convened by lawmaker José Maria Pereira Coutinho and several local unemployed construction workers to discuss the far-reaching unemployment situation faced by over 500 local construction workers, erupted into a demonstration, resulting in protesters flocking onto the road and disrupting traffic.
Over a hundred jobless construction workers gathered at the DSAL in the morning on March 12. Most of them complained loudly about the unfair situation in which they were allegedly dismissed without just cause or forced out by foreign workers.
After the meeting concluded, some emotional demonstrators rushed onto the road in front of the DSAL, intending to block traffic. Some even tried to break through a police cordon which was drawn to confine demonstrators to facilitate the flow of traffic.
During the meeting with the DSAL last Friday, lawmaker Coutinho, as stated in his social media platform, urged the authorities to conduct an in-depth investigation to probe into the situation of “serious unemployment among local construction workers.”
He also called on the DSAL to establish a regulation which requires local construction firms to be transparent about the number of local and non-local employees.
“Such a serious unemployment situation is going to reverberate across the community, affecting not only individuals but also many households in Macau,” Coutinho warned.
The meeting for unemployed local construction workers, held with the DSAL last Friday, was one of several others.
On March 10, a group of lawmakers, including Ella Lei, Leong Sun Iok, Lam Lon Wai and Lei Chan U, delivered a petition letter to the DSAL, urging it to safeguard and prioritize the employment entitlements of local construction workers.
It is said that some local construction painters and other professions in the industry have been laid off lately due to the completion of projects, a relevant construction firm claimed. However, the firm was found to have been employing foreign workers.
Given that the government has allocated a large sum of MOP18.5 billion for public construction projects in 2021, securing a job in the construction industry “should not be a problem” for local residents, Lei Chan U had stated earlier.
Lei suggested the government formulate regulations to require the selected company to hire a certain proportion of local workers to protect local employment rights.
The number of unemployed construction workers in Macau has been climbing. As of March 12, there were 465 locals who had applied for a construction-related job through DSAL, according to a release published after the protest.
As of the end of January, the total number of local employees in Macau was 175,778, down 17,720 year-on-year. The DSAL vows to continue enhancing the mechanism for limiting the number non-resident workers, according to the official statement.

PSP detains three after protest
The Public Security Police Force (PSP) detained three people following the protests, two of which were released shortly afterwards.
The police say that the third detainee disturbed the public order, “resisted and reacted violently, injuring police officers.” The case will be forwarded to the Public Prosecution Office.

Head of construction group asks workers to prepare for possible openings

Workers should prepare themselves for future job openings in the construction industry, Cheong Man Fun, director-general of the Macao Construction Industry General Union, has recently been quoted saying.
He reminded jobseekers in the industry to get themselves prepared for job interviews and training, among other procedures, in order to improve their odds of securing a job. He also remarked that even if the government has plans for public construction projects, time is needed for them to be rolled out, so jobseekers should be patient for the time being.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, the Labour Affairs Bureau has conducted a job matching program for the industry. On the program’s effectiveness, Cheong explained that it is difficult to pinpoint any problems. In contrast, he hopes that both the government and jobseekers will work together to resolve any problems.
He added that local construction workers are mostly skilled at non-structural elements of the work, which suggests that new-build construction projects may create a skills mismatch.
Information so far released by the government state quite a number of infrastructure projects are in progress, such as the fourth Macau-Taipa bridge, the Island Hospital Complex, the Elderly housing and the New Headquarters of the Public Security Police Force. AL